The DirecTv brand will fade from the U.S. marketplace beginning next year. According to a story by Karl Bode in DSL Reports, AT&T will start the process of re-branding the service as AT&T in January, and will complete it when the company’s next generation television platform is launched. That also means that Uverse will begin to fade as well, positioned as AT&T’s “legacy TV offer”. The plan, according to Bode’s story, is to consolidate everything into a single architecture…
The company has previously stated that it’s developing a new gateway that will allow third-party broadband connections, LTE connections and AT&T broadband connections.
A Mountain View cop pulled over Google’s self-driving car to find out why it was holding up traffic by driving too slowly along a heavily travelled section of El Camino Real. According to PD’s blog post…
A Mountain View Police Department traffic officer noticed traffic backing up behind a slow moving car traveling in the eastbound #3 lane on El Camino Real, near Rengstorff Ave. The car was traveling at 24 mph in a 35 mph zone.
After months of fighting, Comcast and the City of Philadelphia reached agreement on a new 15 year cable franchise agreement that included a few spiffs, like expanded eligibility for the low income, $10 a month Internet Essentials program. The announcement came on the eve of a city council vote in Seattle, that would have approved a less generous deal. So, Seattle balked and asked for the same terms as given to Philadelphia. Surprisingly rapidly, Comcast and Seattle negotiators agreed on a few deal sweeteners, including the same IE eligibility upgrade.… More
A business model and an outline of a deal to build a fiber to the home (and business) system in Santa Cruz will be on the table at this afternoon’s city council meeting. In June, the Santa Cruz council authorised city staff to negotiate a public/private partnership agreement with Cruzio, a local Internet service provider. The basic terms are now ready for review. The concept is for the City to pay for and own the fiber, and lease it to Cruzio.… More
Network neutrality rules, adopted by the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year, were examined yesterday by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. Both sides – the FCC and its allies that favor tighter regulation of Internet service providers, and telecommunications companies of all technological flavors that do not – came out of the session with upbeat assessments of whether the three-judge panel would buy their arguments.
According to an article in Ars Technica, the judges seemed amenable to the idea that the FCC can subject residential broadband to common carrier rules but more skeptical about whether those same rules may be applied to mobile services or interconnection agreements between companies…
“The argument started off in a way that we took to be quite hopeful,” according to attorney Kevin Russell, who is representing consumer advocacy groups and other interveners who support the FCC’s rules…
Appeals Court Judge David Tatel “ask[ed] the challengers whether the Supreme Court hadn’t already decided most of the case in a prior decision called Brand X, which he suggested was best read to say that the commission gets broad authority to decide how best to classify these kinds of services,” Russell said…
Potential problem areas for net neutrality proponents include the FCC’s assertion of authority over interconnection disputes, the application of net neutrality rules to mobile networks, and questions about whether the FCC provided the public enough notice before enacting its rules.
Talking to the wrong person at the wrong time at the California Public Utilities Commission can be very expensive. Yesterday the CPUC imposed a $17 million fine on Southern California Edison (SCE) for, among other things, not reporting private conversations with former CPUC president Michael Peevey and current commissioner Mike Florio, nor an email sent to all five commissioners.
Under state law and CPUC rules, anyone who’s involved in particular kinds of business with the commission is required to file a formal report of any private conversation or other exchange – known as ex parte communications – with a commissioner or top level staff.… More
It’s not double parking. It’s a specialised service.
There’s a big problem with Comcast’s claim that the streaming video service it offers broadband-only customers isn’t an Internet service, but rather cable service that’s moving over its internal, Internet-protocol network. As far as I can tell, its $15 a month Stream service is using the same last mile bandwidth that more distant Internet connections use.
In other words, there’s only a certain amount of Internet protocol bandwidth available to customers, and if Comcast loads its up with a proprietary streaming video service, the speed and service quality of connections to other services, such as Hulu or Netflix, will be significantly degraded.… More
Broadband conduit won’t be getting a fast track into federal highway projects. A bill sponsored by Silicon Valley congresswoman Anna Eshoo would require broadband considerations, and conduit in particular, be included in the planning that states do for federally funded highway construction.
The easy way to get it done would have been to include the language in this years’ highway funding bill, which is a must pass piece of legislation. Eschoo tried to do that, but was rebuffed.… More
You don’t need a video replay to referee this one.
When is streaming Internet video not Internet video? When it’s a cable company doing the streaming. At least according to Comcast. Ars Technica has a good article on Comcast’s latest ploy, which is to offer a cut down video package over the Internet connection that broadband-only subscribers can buy, and not count it against the monthly 300 GB cap it’s beginning to impose in some states (but not yet in California).… More
The fitness tracker category is going to huge this holiday season. It’s hard to go to a meeting without seeing a Fitbit or a similar bracelet on the trendiest wrists in the room.
Most people seem to use the devices for step counting, to reassure themselves that their normal daily activity is an adequate workout. It’s useful feedback, and a lot of people seem to be altering their routine to maximise steps.… More
