Found this on HotAir and thought it would be of interest to our readers. Ed Morrisary formerly Blogged at Captain’s Quarters is now part of the Hot Air team. He is tagged to go to the RNC Convention. His press packet included some interesting data from QWest who is providing the data transport for the whole affair. –

Qwest will provide the customer with a RJ45 plug for each 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps service and a fiber optic SC/PC connector for each 1 Gbps service. The service does not provide any hardware or cabling beyond the plug. The RJ45 cabling provided will be approximately 6ft in length.

* 10 Mbps (Dedicated) - $850.00
* 100 Mbps (Dedicated) - $7,650.00
* 1 Gbps (Dedicated) - $53,550.00

That rate plan is for FOUR DAYS! Now granted QWest is treating this as a single point cost structure. So they have to cover all the costs up front. But still, something is very wrong if in this century we can’t assemble a DS3 or better cheaper and better for these types of events something is wrong. This convention center is not a field called Woodstock.

Ed, do yourself a favor. Buy two EVDO cards and pocket about $500.

Linky.

Well we have heistated to report this story both because of its sexual content and it just follows a pattern with Verizon. But Verizon has acted so it now makes it a legitimate story. So –

Verizon is aware of this incident involving one of its vendors. We have zero tolerance for violations of the law and hold our vendor responsible for the actions of its employees. Out of respect and concern for our customers, Verizon has suspended D2D in DE until further investigation is complete.”

That is a contracted employee was caught committing a male sexual act in the open. In itself that is pretty disgusting. But actually that is not the point I am trying to bring to the fore here. We have noted here before that the more you let others represent the brand the more likely it is to be tarnished. If you are not vetting the people that represent you with the same as if they are employees then hey that’s your loss.

So now you have to suspend door to door solicitation till this is over. How long will that be? At the sametime how is the public supposed to react anytime that a person in a verizon shirt shows up at there door. Or for that matter how should people react to that ‘verizon crowd’ now?

Need to think guys and gals. Your brand is being trashed by people you have not vetted. Keep it up and you will be headed for Comcast territory. An observation from a concerned stockholder.

linky

Touting a $315 million investment in DOCSIS 3 sounds huge, except it works out to a measly $100 per subscriber. With the anticipated high cost of the Cablevision’s 30MBPS uncapped tier, that investment should be recouped in the first quarter or two. Very few businesses enjoy such handsome ROI’s. Having said that, I wish I could get it here at whatever price.

 Today, Cablevision’s fastest tier runs at 30Mbps over DOCSIS 2.0, and is truly uncapped — allowing users to get as much speed as the network will allow. Rutledge says the company spent nearly $20 million on both DOCSIS 3.0 deployment and their plan to offer Cablevision customers free Wi-Fi during the second quarter. “The total capital for that [combined project] over a three-year budget cycle is about $100 per customer or in the range of $315 million,” says the COO. (DSL Reports)

Yep, we mentioned that the first vendor to provide a no ETF plan would have a leg up on the conpetition, here. That company is TMobile. Are they scared of the California ruling? I don’t know. For the consumer however this is very good news. –

Starting August 6th, T-mobile will be the first national carrier to offer month to month postpaid plans. It sounds like these plans will be very similar, if not the same, to T-mobile’s current offerings of individual, or family time plans, with or without MyFaves. Upfront costs will include an activation fee, and the full retail price of any phone purchased*. To us, this sounds like an extreamely customer friendly step by T-mobile, that we greatly appreciate. Credit checks will be required for this plan, however they will be the same as any 1 or 2 year contract credit checks. Unfortunately T-mobile@Home will not be avalible to customers that sign up for month to month contracts.

We hope this is a trend.

Linky

Comcast’s 2Q profits rose but was below expected results. They gained digital subscribers overall but are reporting that they have had a 50% drop in new residential installs due to the housing slump. But all was not rosy –

High-speed Internet added 278,000 new subscribers, down 18 percent from 2007. Revenue was up, however, by 10 percent to $1.8 billion. Customers on average paid $42.01 a month, down 3 percent.

Digital voice added 555,000 net new customers, down 20 percent from a year ago, but revenue also was up 77 percent to $636 million. Customers paid $39.48 a month on average, down 7 percent.

New growth yes. But even for Comcast the rate of that growth is down in comparison to the same time last year, 2Q.

Linky.

Yes ladies and gentlemen the Telcos have made being brain dead a true artform. Now I will grant you that it is of great import that Verizon is maintaining a canon of morals beyond reproach [cough, cough]. But guys if the former doctor has no problem with using this as his sir name then you should not either. If you kept this up you would lose every Jewish Russian immigrant on the lower east side of NYC. –

And Dr. Herman I. Libshitz, retired radiologist, is no pushover.

Verizon is learning this the hard way.

This spring, the 69-year-old physician and his wife, Alison, were trying to upgrade the Internet service in their summer place in Rehoboth Beach, Del. They had dial-up. They wanted DSL.

When it was time to enter their user name and create an e-mail address, Verizon wouldn’t let them complete the job.

This is how the doctor remembers it:

“We called their help line, and got a wonderful young man in the Philippines who told us:

” ‘We can’t install it because your name has - in it.’ ”

I asked the doctor how I was going to print that. He said, “Just say it’s a word contained in Libshitz.”

He’d defended his family name with his fists as a boy at 58th and Pine. He wore it proudly on his Air Force uniform during the Vietnam era when he was defending his country.

He’d displayed it on white coats at Hahnemann and Jefferson, then at Duke and Texas, where he spent most of his distinguished career, before retiring to Chestertown, Md. He’d signed it to 200 academic papers and six texts.

The doctor asked to speak with a supervisor.

Has ‘$%it’ become the new ‘black’ in the PC world of Telcodom? Sadly the CSR is just reading from a script. Glad to see that cooler heads prevailed up the chain. But really.

Linky;

Dear AT&T and Comcast, we know that this has to be driving you crazy. You’ve added bandwidth at great expense and dedicated it to pay TV via Digital cable or a closed IPTV system. Who could have predicted viewers prefer to watch programming on demand rather than on your schedule? Since they are watching commercials either way, why would they they prefer to not pay extra to view?  How dare consumers prefer a big dumb pipe that they control? Now, you’re pushing triple play and bandwidth caps in a soft economy. No wonder your take rate is starting to suck. We’ve told you before, but lets rey again: The world wants a big dumb pipe, not a bundle of scheduled programming with broadband on the side.

Now about that 20%. It comes from a new survey:

It showed that 50 percent of people viewing TV on the Web are watching programs as they become available and “appear to be beginning to use the computer as a substitute for the television set,” Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), which conducted the poll, said.

The other half are using the Internet to watch programs they have missed, or to re-watch segments or episodes they have already seen, IMMI, a company which links media exposure to consumer action, added.

“This is the first study to show there are a significant amount of people watching primetime shows online who are not watching some portion of those shows on television,” Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI, said in a statement. (Reuters)

[With apologies to V8] All I can say is stick it in your eye and smoke it when you are done. Looks like California sent a message to the carriers and Sprint wasn’t fast enough to step back like everyone else. Poor shareholders. –

A judge is ordering Sprint Nextel to refund $18.25 million to California customers who paid early termination fees to get out of their mobile-phone contracts. The tentative decision also requires the company to forgo $54.75 million in early termination fees it levied but went unpaid by California consumers.

A California judge late Monday ruled (.pdf) that the fees, which range as high as $200 a line, were an unlawful penalty under California law and were “implemented primarily as a means to discourage customers from leaving” their contracts.

The decision comes as major wireless carriers — T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T — have recast their early termination fee schedules and pro-rated them, in part to avoid or settle lawsuits. Verizon agreed two weeks ago to pay $21 million to settle a similar class action.

A pro-rated fee means a customer pays less to break a contract the longer one continues the contract. Contracts usually vary from one to two years.

We of course have indicated almost a year ago that this had a good chance of being the outcome. Between Calif and Wis the ETF is taking a beating. The first carrier to drop it all together will be more competitive in the long run. ETFs made sense when the network was thin, there were few users and the capital costs per user were high. It was an insurance vehice for the carrier to know that their investment in physical plant would bear fruit. But that has long since been a problem The carriers have all the customers they need and their investment dollar per user is low. They risk nothing these days by not having an ETF.

My one complaint? I detest courts meddling in contracts unless they are illegal. Clearly ETF’s are not. Not only that but there are no contract wireless options in the marketplace. If enough people walked to no contract carriers the loss of revenue would force the ETF carriers to drop the requirement. Consumers sometimes are just not thinking.

Linky.

We watched in horror as the FCC presided over the monopoly telcos grabbing most of the 700 MHz spectrum much like a couple of mafia dons dividing turf. The FCC did nothing to limit spectrum holdings by a single party. Add to the mix a clueless Congress that is unwilling or incapable of directing the agency, and you have a completely disfuntional wireless broadband market that promises to be underpowered and overpriced. At least a group of rural carriers is standing up and crying foul.

An advocacy group representing smaller, rural wireless carriers is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reinstate limits on the amount of spectrum a carrier can own — a move that it believes could stop the nation’s largest wireless companies from grabbing an unfair share.

The Rural Telecommunications Group (RTG) said its members’ networks could be in jeopardy if what it sees as a “duopoloy” in spectrum ownership comes into play, following recent spectrum acquisitions by wireless market leaders AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone Group (NYSE: VOD).

“As more consolidations are taking place, more spectrum is ending up with the big players,” Carri Bennet, RTG’s general counsel, told InternetNews.com. “The rural carriers need access to spectrum.”

The group wants a cap of 110 MHz on the amount of spectrum a carrier can hold below the 2.3 GHz band within a county.(Internet News)

It’s clear municipalilites can benefit from wireless broadband. Chosing the right model and executing it as a business tool rather than a political one seems to be the difference between success and failure. There’s no reason to believe that this would not apply to Wimax as well as WiFi.

The city of Milledgeville, Georgia has contracted Clearwire to deploy a municipal WiMAX network to provide city-wide wireless internet access. The service will be subscription-based, with a number of different service tiers available. Funding for the project is coming from a USD862,000 grant awarded to the city by the Georgia Technology Authority in 2006. (Telegeography)

We’ll be watching this one attentively.  Will the AT&T legal squad try to stop it?