Greyhound gets it. With airport security now turning the short commuter flight into an all day affair, surly airline workers and airports beating up travelers with high prices for things like Wifi (with the exception of the few offering it free), the bus may be ready for a comeback. Free Wifi is like free beer. Serve it up and you’ll pack the house, or in this case, the bus.

Greyhound has launched a new service that will offer affordable tickets (as low as $1 each way when purchased in advance online), slightly more leg room (three inches, to be exact), and free on-board Wi-Fi to travelers in its major Northeastern corridors.

“BoltBus” will make its maiden voyage tomorrow between New York City (33^rd and 7^th) and Washington, D.C. (11^th and G). To promote the launch, tickets for all seats for travel this weekend (starting tomorrow through Sunday) are one dollar if purchased in advance online.

With this new service, Greyhound is cutting costs while also catering to its new generation of customers, a more Internet-enabled crowd than the typical bus travelers of yore.

“We think customers will really enjoy the ability to be online while traveling,” says Dustin Clark, a Greyhound spokesperson. “Basically, we’ve targeted this consumer segment that we thought would really enjoy express point-to-point service between these cities—students, business travelers, commuters—people who would actually benefit from being able to stay connected. If they need to do work or school work, a typical bus trip is three to four hours that would normally be lost time—now you’re not losing any time.” (Wifi Planet)

Is there a soon to be graduated engineer in the family? Well then why not take a crack at the FCC’s EIT program? Can’t hurt to have that on the resume.

Washington, D.C. - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today announced that it is seeking applications from engineering school graduates with superior academic credentials and an interest in communications engineering for its 2008 Engineer-in-Training (EIT) Program. Through the program, the FCC recruits new and recent engineering school graduates to the FCC and the field of communications.

Recent engineering school graduates and candidates for graduation in the spring of 2008 are invited to apply for several openings in the program’s 2008 class. All EIT Program participants will be located at the FCC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. or select FCC field offices. Candidates will
receive training at FCC headquarters or select FCC field offices. Applications must be received by April 10, 2008.

Can’t hurt to waste the money for the stamp. Details on entry and rules at the link.

Lnky.

Sharp release a cell phone with some pretty neat features. One of whish is a built in biz card scanner! Quite a feat I would say. —

The Sharp Softbank 922SH features a 3.5 inch screen with VGA resolution and 2,000:1 contrast ratio.
Sharp highlights the large 9.9mm key pitch of the QWERTY keyboard that enables ease of use.

Other features of the elegant “Internet Machine” include external 1.2 OLED screen, sending and receiving email while closed, business card scanner, and microSD card slot.
The Sharp Softbank 922SH will start shipping on March 28th in Japan.

If you don’t pay your Comcast bill they turn you off right? Well it looks like Comcast doesn’t think it works the other way when they own the bills to somebody else. Or at least they don’t to the Williams family. –

HANNIBAL, MO. (AP) — Some Comcast customers feel they have lighter wallets these days, but they’re not alone.

You might remember earlier in March, Comcast, the cable company that took over Insight, informed customers it would raise rates in April.

That came just months after telling the city of Quincy it wouldn’t raise rates soon after it took over operations.

We heard from a Northeast Missouri family who says Comcast isn’t paying its bills like it should.

KHQA dug deeper to get facts in this FactFinder report.

Kay Williams says Comcast has rented her land for the location of a tower, but even though the land is still in use, she says she hasn’t seen any rent checks for six months.

Personally I think the Williams’ ought to hit them with a late charge like the do to subscribers. Good for the Goose is….

Whole story here.

This is the reason why NetFlix is knocking the breath out of BlockBuster. They have an outage. So rather than duck the whole issue and try and weasel out of the fact. They owe up to it and offer a 5% rebate to all those affected. Its a reasonable way to say ‘We’re sorry’.

Chicago (IL) - Netflix has reacted to its service outage on Monday and informed its customers that a 5% credit will be applied to their account “in the next few days”.

Netflix’ website was down from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm PST on Monday and prevented the company’s customers not only from ordering new movies (which wasn’t such a big deal since most customers anyway have lots of movies queued up), but also from accessing the digital streaming platform.

In an email sent to customers early today, Netflix wrote:

“As you may have heard, our shipping system was unexpectedly down for most of Monday. We should have shipped you a DVD but were unable to.
Your DVD was shipped today, Tuesday, March 25th, instead.

Taking care of the customer is the first leg of being successful.

Linky.

Endless convulsing seems to be the only constant under Moto’s new management. A split between carrier and consumer device businesses made a lot of sense same time ago, and now it’s actually so. I wonder if both of Moto’s businesses would not be in better shape now if this had been done while business was still very good.

The suburban Chicago-based cell phone maker has been under pressure from billionaire investor Carl Icahn for changes meant to revitalize its cell-phone business. The cell phone unit has seen its sales and stock price plummet with the company unable to produce second act to the once-popular Razr phone.

Motorola said the handset business will operate separately from another company that will encompass its home and networks business, which sells TV set-top boxes and modems, and its enterprise mobility solutions, which sells computing and communications equipment to businesses. (Yahoo News)

Another good outcome could be Carl Ican making enough money to go away. While he may be very good at shaking up complacent management, he’s not been good for companies he’s stayed involved with over the long term.

It looks like the world is not Verizon’s oyster. At least not down in Tampa right now. All sorts of operational issues are cropping up for the carrier.

Sam Miller came so close to tossing his Verizon cable TV box to the curb outside.

After signing up in November for Verizon’s $99 a month deal for FiOS cable TV, Internet and phone service, Verizon was still sending him bills for $130 or more. He called to complain each month, but eventually his bill was stacked with $265 in extra fees.

One time he called Verizon, “they told me we didn’t have an account. I told them they could pick up their stuff at the curb,” Miller said. By calling random phone numbers at Verizon, he eventually found a helpful marketing clerk in a branch office to untangle his bill. He still hasn’t gotten the free TV for signing up — that’s going to take months.

“The TV picture reception is noticeably better,” Miller said. “It just seems like they grew so fast they could not keep up with customer demands.”

Unfortunately for Verizon, Miller is not alone in having complaints.

As Verizon signs up thousands of new customers a month in the Tampa Bay area, company officials say they’re working to correct problems with customer service: firing some sales workers, retraining the rest, and restructuring how they deal with customer complaints.

Then there is this fella in in NY who seems none too entertained by his FIOS service. [Content warning ahead]

I find it interesting that NOW Verizon is having problems with FIOS. Much of this was test bedded in Keller, Tx two years ago with a great deal of success. The TBO article seems to allude to operational issues not technology. But tech issues are cropping up.

Linky.

Funny thing about an un-competitive market like the one we have for broadband and wireless communication in the USA. The companies in the game still go to war with each other, but the wars are like mafia turf battles, with little or not real benefit to consumers. We may be seeing the beginning of a wireless turn battle. The cable guys have long been looking for a new way to retaliate against the telcos for invading thier pay tv turf. Wireless may be the ticket.

According to unnamed sources, the companies are discussing a plan to provide funding for a new wireless company that would be operated by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire. The new company would use network spectrum and assets from both companies to form a nationwide wireless network using WiMax.

Last summer, Sprint and Clearwire announced they’d be working together to build a nationwide network. In November, they terminated their agreement, but each company has said separately that it is talking to the other about ways to work together. For months, rumors have floated around that Sprint would spin off its WiMax network, known as Xohm, and combine it with Clearwire’s network.

The Journal said the companies are now trying to raise $3 billion to create the joint venture. Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, would put in about $1 billion, while Time Warner, the second largest cable operator in the country, is willing to pony up $500 million, the Journal said.

Bright House Networks, a smaller cable operator, is also supposedly in the talks and could contribute around $100 million to $200 million. Intel might be contributing $1 billion, and Google could throw in a couple of hundred million too, the article said. (Cnet)

It would be great to get Xohm completed. Too bad it may be under the thumb of the cable guys. It’s kind of like bringing the local Don in.

With the ability for anyone to publish or distribute, who needs distributors? Musicians have figured out the best way to get paid for thier work is to keep the rights to their material and self distribute. It seems that Sony / BMG caught on to the concept. There are few details, but the service is expected to be around $10 a month,and the media may have some portability. This may put a good dent in the Itunes / Zune / Amazon pay per download business since the catalog Sony owns the rights to is extensive.

Sony BMG’s artist roster includes newcomers like Leona Lewis, along with stalwarts like Alicia Keys and Celine Dion, as well as country singer Carrie Underwood among others.

In an interview with the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published Monday, chief executive Rolf Schmidt-Holtz did not offer a timeline for unveiling the service.

As for costs to subscribers, the newspaper quoted him as saying that the “simplest option would be a flat rate” fee per month of around 6 to 8 euros ($9 to $12) for unlimited access to Sony BMG’s entire music catalog and that the downloads would be compatible with all players, including Apple’s ubiquitous iPod. (Yahoo News)

If Sony does a good job and makes the downloads truly portable / useable, the service will be a huge success. The caveat is Sony has a pretty terrible track record at doing user freindly content distribution. Presuming they have learned their lessons and do it right the other big music companies, and even Hollywood will surely try to duplicate the success. The artists in the catalog that are not on the “A” list will still probably not share in the wealth, sadly they never did.

The biggest loser could be Itunes / Zune Marketplace / Amazon. That could leave Jeff, Steve and Steve looking like Larry, Darryl and Darryl. Don’t worry too much guys. I’m betting Sony will find a way to screw it up.

Hey if you just paid $16B for a brand new set of digs overlooking the Pacific ocean only to find a bunch of squatters in there what would you do? Yeah me too, I’d call the cops and have them evicted. Well what if it was the 700mhz spectrum? Ah hah! –

Imagine you just spent a fortune on some excellent beachfront property, only to discover some termites in the basement. Now imagine that the only way to get rid of the termites involves some toxic chemicals that may arouse the ire of the environmentally conscious locals. What do you do? Learn to live with the termites, or spray and tell your green neighbors to deal?

Oddly, Verizon and AT&T now find themselves in a similar mess — if we substitute “wireless microphones” for “termites.” Verizon and AT&T (As well as a bunch of other folks) just spent a boatload of cash on licenses in the reclaimed analog television spectrum. The FCC has rules in place to migrate the broadcasters — both full power and low power. But — as far as I can tell — no one has plans to migrate the wireless microphone folks, who operate on vacant channels in the band. While in theory wireless microphones are a secondary licensed service and notifying the licensees that channels 52-69 are off limits after the digital conversion, the situation is a little more complicated. As comments filed in white spaces proceeding confirm, wireless microphones are bloody everywhere — with huge numbers of users buying and operating them without licenses.

Somehow I just can’t form the visual of the FCC wearing the Orkin uniform.

Is this a great country or what?

Linky.