Matthouse

Comcast caves, goes back to “normal” traffic management

March 27, 2008 – 1:26 pm
As a follow up to my previous post about Comcast, in which I jumped on the blogger bandwagon, Comcast seems to have had a change of heart. According to this press release, Comcast has agreed treat peer-to-peer file sharing protocols with the same priority as any other packets. The PR-speak has a lot of fluffy stuff in it, but that's pretty much what it boils down to. This is an important development, because it means Comcast saw the writing on the wall, both in backlash from its customer base (which translates directly into lost customers), as well as the impending reprimand (or worse) from the FCC. Apparently, net neutrality (wikipedia) still exists, which is extremly good news for the consumer. In short, it means that if you buy an internet connection from Comcast, they will no longer restrict what protocols you can use with it, but will ...

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Godaddy censors the internet… again…

March 12, 2008 – 11:55 am
WIRED is running an article entitled "GoDaddy Silences Police Watch-dog Site"...  On many occasions in my hosting business, people flock to Godaddy to buy their domains, against my advice.  Yes, they're cheap, and cheap is always good (their cost of $10 per year is below my cost through a reputable wholeseller).  However, do you *really* want the risk?  If you're a business, do you really want to wake up one morning and find your domain wiped from existance, simply because somebody complained to godaddy about you?

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99.9% uptime

March 5, 2008 – 4:20 pm
After being out sick since Saturday, and coming back today to find 687 unread items in my RSS feed integrator, I found an interesting post on Slashdot, entitled "Why is Less Than 99.9% Uptime Acceptable?". Within the first sentance, the original poster mentiones five-nine's (99.999% instead of the three-nine's (99.9%) listed in the subject, but I digress. The original article asks the same basic question:  Why do we put up with availability of 99.9% (which they say (I didn't do the math to check it) translates to about 3 and a half days a year) , or even 99% out of our cellular, internet, and other "new technology" communication services, when we have demanded 99.999% (5 minutes per year) availability from our traditional phone service? The answer is right there in the article...  Traditional phone service is regulated as a monopoly utility by the Federal Communications Commission and the Public Utilities Commission, just like the ...

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Qwest discussing a wireless deal with Verizon

February 27, 2008 – 1:16 pm
Once again we turn to CNET's news.com for this article, which says that Qwest (the phone company) is in touch with Verizon (the wireless company).  For a number of years, Qwest has sold bundled wireless service that they resell from Sprint along with their home phone and broadband services.  According to the article, Qwest is unhappy with the terms of the deal, and is looking for a "more tightly integrated partnership". Of course investors might be looking to Qwest to come up a wireless merger/aquisition, since they are currently the only major phone company that isn't part of a wireless company.  Wireless isn't profitable, as I've pointed out before (and the article mentions), but they want to get subscribers locked into bundled packages with their other, more profitable services.

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House proposes to force cell carriers to offer contract-free cellular

February 26, 2008 – 3:39 pm
Ran accross this article, entitled "Democratic bill could force Apple, AT&T to unlock iPhone"...  The title is somewhat misleading, only because an article about apple and the iphone is likely to score higher viewership. The bill, proposed by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) does a number of things, but most notably it would force cell carriers to offer subsidy-free equipment, and plans without termination fees for use on that equipment.  This means you would be able to walk in and throw down for a phone at full price, and then buy service on that phone on a month-to-month basis that is comparable in price to the service you would get had you gone the traditional, subsidized route.  You would also be able to bring a phone in that you purchased elsewhere, and buy service on a month-to-month basis. Lets explain about subsidies and contracts...  Cell phones, contrary to popular belief, are not Free.  ...

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Verizon offers “unlimited” calling plan

February 19, 2008 – 10:09 am
This article hit the news today, which says that Verizon now has an unlimited calling plan for only $100/month with no roaming or long distance.  The article says this could spark a price war, forcing the other major carriers to offer a similar plan for a similar price.  It says Sprint is already offering an unlimited plan for $120/month. I'm not sure I agree -- with all the problems Sprint currently has, they may not be keen to follow suit.

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Analog cellular networks to shut down Monday

February 15, 2008 – 5:28 pm
If you've read my bloG in the past, you might know some of the history of old cellular networks...  To recap, there were originally two analog cellular networks in each major market, one (usually) owned by the phone company.  In the Denver area, if you trace back the roots, those networks are now owned and operated by Verizon and AT&T.  OK, enough history... On Monday the 18th of February, both the AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System -- but don't let the word "advanced" fool you, it's the original analog cellular networks) networks are going dark.  It's been almost 30 years since they were first deployed, but people are still complaining about them shutting down, and for good reason.  It's always been there, and now it won't be, thanks to an FCC ruling allowing them to finally shut it down.  AT&T's legacy TDMA network will be shutting down as well. This may have far ...

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Comcast says bloggers keep them honest

February 14, 2008 – 1:46 pm
I'm not a fan of Comcast, and never have been.  Most people I know would rather deal with Comcast than the phone company (Qwest), but not me.  I've been doing telecom long enough to know how to get what I want from Qwest, but Comcast just never can get it right. So with that said, it should come as no suprise that I'm telling you about this link on CNET, which quotes Comcast as saying that bloggers are enough to keep them honest when it comes to bandwidth management (sometimes called traffic management).  The FCC has opened an investigation into Comcast's bandwidth management practices, at the request of a user advocacy group.  Also this news.com article indicates they might be the subject of a antitrust lawsuite, since blocking traffic from, say, a company offering a TV service using bittorrent technology might have the same legal theory as Vonage offering a phone service ...

Posted in Rants, Technology | 1 Comment »

Blackberry down in N.America

February 11, 2008 – 3:49 pm
According to a story on the AP, Blackberry service is currently down for all of north america. Even though I own RIMM stock, I wouldn't use a Blackberry product.  It's bad enough that your cellular provider could, in certain instances, have problems (although to my knowledge none have ever had a problem where *all* of their subscribers, nation wide, were off-the-air).  It's because of problems like these that I occasionally think about building my own 1-way paging network, but I digress. This isn't the first time this has ever happened to Blackberry's service, either.  Back in June, 2005, back-to-back nationwide outages in less than a week took Blackberry users off the air as well. The best advice is to use a PDA or Smartphone that can operate on the internet on its own, and utilize your carrier's direct data connection (GPRS/EDGE/UMTS for GSM, EV-DO for CDMA).  This way at least if you go ...

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Sprint says continuing iDEN network

January 30, 2008 – 2:35 pm
In other Cellular news, Sprint is once again trying to have its cake and eat it too...  According to a press release posted on their site, instead of shutting down this half-breed "cellular" network with no possibility of carrying next-gen services such as mobile web, let alone high-speed data services, they're continueing to invest in it, as well as their CDMA network. OK, I know people hate background, but I once again feel it is warranted here.  In the beginning, the Earth was created.  Not long after, contractors of all kinds (general contractors, electritions, plumbers, and other trades) were created to build things on the Earth, and those contractors (and lots of other businesses - pretty much any company with a mobile fleet) relied on communications provided by radio systems in the SMR service.  The companies who owned and operated those radio systems leased out radios and provided airtime to companies ...

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