I recently read an article on Forbes.com where the reporter attempts to talk about Embryonic Stem Cell research (or ES) and its supposed dirty little secret. In this article the author, Michael Fumento, asks when will ES be ready for clinical applications and suggests that ES is not worth pursuing because end results that involve direct cures for diseases and injuries may be decades away. There are so many problems with this article it is hard to know where to begin.
First of all research isn’t just about solving one particular problem. While there is always a primary goal, often research into one thing yields discoveries in other, often related areas. These discoveries often give us ways to improve the condition and reduce the suffering of those inflicted with the malady that is being researched. So while a “cure” may not yet have been found for, lets say AIDs, the research done into the subject has yielded drugs and methods to reduce symptoms, extend the lives of the infected, and significantly reduce the risk of spreading the disease. This could not have been done without this research, yet we still have no cure.
The next problem with this article is that ES is a very broad field with research into everything from diabetes and heart disease to spinal cord injuries and Multiple Sclerosis. To say it isn’t done yet or results are decades away is lunacy. There are too many areas of study for ES to be “done” yet. We will probably even be studying the field for thousands of years to come and still gain results. Granted at some point the results will become less and less frequent as we unlock more and more secrets, but that does not mean the information that we gain is useless. So far the study of ES has yielded much information into how the human body develops, how cancers work, how cells gain their position in the body, etc. This information has already led us to solutions and treatments for many different diseases.
Finally, I have a problem with someone whom knows little to nothing about research, save what he Googled in one afternoon, telling a wide audience of public (most of whom are probably just as ignorant on the subject) that Embryonic Stem Cell research is not worth the time, money, and effort put into it. Mr. Fumento, stick to subjects you know and stop spreading discourse about that which you are so ignorant, such as anything to do with science.
Tags: Forbes.com, news, reporters, research, Stem Cell Research
Normally I try to stick to consumer and constitutional rights in this blog, but I found myself moved by a story that I found today coming from Iran. Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 2 weeks you would know that the results of the recent Iranian presidential elections has created a hailstorm of anger from the citizens of Iran and of the world. Riots have been breaking out. Peaceful demonstrations have been disrupted by violent Iranian police and military forces. One such demonstration recently turned deadly for a young woman.
More and more over the next couple weeks you will hear about the brief, but powerful story of a young woman named Neda. According to reports coming from Iran she was attending a peaceful demonstration when a member of the Basij forces shot her as she stood next to her father. In the video you can see the young woman falling over and been caught by two men then slowly lowered to the ground. The older of the two men, presumably her father, starts saying her name “Neda” over and over again. As she lies on the ground you can see her eyes jumping about, confusion, suprise, and terror etched across her face. Then the worst starts to happen, blood starts running out of her mouth and nose, she loses conciousness. Within seconds her father realizes that there is nothing that can be done for her. Panic fills his voice as he starts crying and screaming her name.
This horrifying scene is difficult to take in, but it symbolizes the struggle and danger now facing any Iranians that are openly offended by the way the election was conducted and the results found. As the violence continues to escalate, the President Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are losing more and more control of the citizens of Iran. Protesters are chanting “death to the dictator”. Many forms of comunication are being blocked in Iran including most social networking websites, cell phones, and text messaging. Foreign reporters are barred from reporting on any news of the protests in Iran. But messages are still getting out. The world is listening.
I don’t know how much longer this can continue before the world reacts. We must put more pressure on the Iranian government to conduct themselves peacefully and actually listen to the concerns of its people. If they want another election and a real chance at a fair election then give it to them. Unfortunately events like this cannot be handled by outside forces using military action. This must be solved by the people of Iran, for now. We can only directly intercede at the behest of the Iranian citizens. This could quickly unfold into a new revolution or coup or possibly even a full-blown civil war.
The video has appeared on YouTube and several other websites, but it has been taken down from there. But it can still be viewed. To see it please follow the link below. I warn you it is VERY graphic and I would not recommend small children seeing it.
http://www.javno.com/en-world/video–young-iran-woman-shot-in-the-heart_266818
Tags: Elections, Human Rights, Iran, Justice, Politics, Protests
I will be the first one to tell you how much I appreciate the anti-smoking laws being a non-smoker. Though the arguments against them are just as pertinent as those for them, especially when talking about our rights. However, now anti-smoking groups are trying to force movie studios to give an automatic R rating for any movie that includes smoking. They say that watching smoking in movies encourages children to smoke and so they want to expose fewer children to it. While that may be true about children and teens being more likely to smoke after seeing their favorite movie stars do it, shouldn’t the responsibility be put on the parents not everyone else?
Our society has more and more become a nanny society with everyone but parents being blamed for the actions, morals, and attitudes of our children. Parents demand that schools teach their children about sex because they are afraid to, but then turn around and complain about how and what they are taught in sex education. Parents blame violent video games and movies and music for teenagers committing more acts of violence.
For once can our society get to the root of the problem, bad parenting? Stop blaming everyone else for not paying enough attention to your children and taking the time to educate them about right and wrong. To teach them about smoking and drinking and sex. To explain to them the cautions they should take, including moderation. Instead of attacking everyone in sight, how about we send a better message. The message about being a better parent and taking responsibility for your mistakes as a parent.
When did parenting in America become litigating and lawmaking? Grow up and place the blame where it belongs, on poor parenting.
Tags: anti-smoking, mass media, media, movie ratings, Movies, parenting, smoking
Years ago, at the dawning of the internet, news outlets broke from the norm by offering the news online at no addition cost. It has been almost two decades since then and several things have changed. First, the number of sources of news online has grown exponentially. Second, the technology has changed and improved, giving access to more people in more places and in more ways than ever before. Third, the online medium has grown to do something that traditional media predicted to never happen. It has grown to compete with all forms of traditional media which includes TV, radio, print, and even movies. That combined with the fact that few in traditional media have done anything to adapt to the changing world has meant a significant and continuing slump in profits and sales for them.
As times change and technology changes the world, businesses are expected to adapt to these changes to continue to compete and flourish. When cars were invented buggies, horses, and trains steadily became less and less common. The old way of traveling made less sense and thus, in most cases, became a novelty. Today we have a different revolution. The revolution of information.
Before traditional media existed news travelled slowly by word of mouth. While someone in the same community would find out about something within a few hours or days, but people outside of that community would rarely hear of it and when they did it was months or even years later. Then came mail carriers and information began flowing regularly between communities, interconnecting them in an exciting new way. Then printed news papers started delivering the same news to everyone within a day or two. Radio stormed on the scene, able to reach a much larger audience than print media, audibly and instantly sending information as soon as it reached broadcasters and providing a more personal form of entertainment. Television brought pictures and video to the audible news and added ever more value. Now we have the internet.
With the internet the news is now. Not only do you get it on your computer, but also on your mobile phone anywhere you are. News is instantaneous and viral. Within seconds the entire world can be saturated with information on some newsworthy event. Traditional media has a difficult time competing with that because most value that can be offered by traditional media can also be offered by the internet.
Newspapers, especially, are fearful and they are now trying to put the cat back in the bag. They don’t want online news to be free. They want a subscriber base, like the good old days. Just tonight I saw a TV advertisement for the New York Times online. They are offering a subscription-based service to deliver you their news reports for $4.70 per week. This is the same New York Times that sends me free news via email alerts, an iphone app, an RSS feed, and via a website. Why in the world they expect me to want to pay for the news I already get for free is beyond me. Nothing in that commercial indicated that they were offering me something new or extra. No information about advanced services, no added value whatsoever.
If newspapers expect to survive, then they need to change their business model to one that will work in the age of information. Some will say that you can’t adapt, there is no way to make money online. Most people said that about search engines, but one of the biggest companies in the world is Google and their flagship product is a search engine. If the newpapers offer content people want to read then people will come to read it. From their advertising and special offers takes over. Give the customer a reason to come and a reason to stay and you will be profitable.
Tags: adaptibility, advertising, business models, New York Times, news, newspapers, traditional media
Yes, what is going on in Italy is about as frightening as that headline reads. Authorities in Italy have been attacking the internet on multiple fronts as of late with many moves that are eerily intrusive and controlling. First you may be wondering why such a drastic headline. I want everyone to know that I generally hate over-exaggerated news headlines, but I thought this appropriate in this particular case. Italy has been trying to build greater and greater control of the internet and has been doing some very scary things to accomplish an unprecedented amount of control.
The first story that leads me to believe this is one that has been around for a few months now. Apparently some teenagers in Italy filmed themselves attacking and abusing a mentally handicapped person. Then those kids posted the video on YouTube. Authorities in Italy found the video and used it to find and prosecute the teenagers. This would have been a great example of how the internet could be used to stop criminal behavior. However, the story doesn’t end there. Within a few hours of being made aware of the offensive content of the video, Google (owns YouTube) promptly took it down. But instead of praising Google for their swift action and cooperation with authorities, Italy has now charged several Google executives with criminal offenses for allowing this content to be posted on the internet on a Google-owned site.
This is insane. Not only did the team at Google comply quickly and professionally, but the video itself helped catch the perps. There is no reason for them to arrest the execs.
That was just the beginning. The authorities have been trying to implement a three-strikes law like France recently passed recently. This law basicaly says that if you are accused of even attempting to pirate media more than 3 times will automatically be banned from the internet. Then they added to that law by requiring all blogs to register with the government. Thus, making it easier for the government to monitor citizens. This is of course scary not only because it attacks anonymity on the internet, but it also sounds like the first steps to stamping out free speech online and arresting dissidents. Italy is considered a parliamentary republic, which is a type of democracy that doesn’t have a clear separation of the executive and legislative branches.
Then the owners of an online music site in Italy were thrown in jail because the Italian music industry body, SIAE, has accused them of copyright infringement. This is in spite of the fact that they did obtain a license to sell the music. Though apparently, according to SIAE and the IFPI site, not the correct licenses. Note plural, meaning they have to have multiple licenses in Italy to sell music. In fact one man even claimed that you need as many as 33 different licenses to sell music in Europe. Though some have disputed that number. Why is it that this is not simplified, seeing as how the countries of Europe have been slowly building one unified governing body known as the European Union. Doesn’t sound very united on this front. Another question, why is it that criminal charges are being filed for copyright infringement. This is not larceny, burglary, murder, or any number of other heinous crimes. It is simply a business dispute. It is barely even that because the owners thought that they had obtained all the correct licenses. If you keep changing the rules, how can you expect anyone to follow them?
It gets even better. The Italian government has decided that they want to be able to listen in on the calls made with the popular service, Skype. They want a back door installed so that they can listen into whichever calls they like. It seems the wiretapping issue has reached a whole new level. In Europe, Skype is a very popular tool. While it can be used for evil, such as coordinating terrorist attacks, it is generally used for private conversation to save money (over the cost of local phone services, which are generally high). There are a number of issues with this. The first that comes to mind is that the internet has no borders. What if they use this to listen in on conversations people in other countries are having with people in countries that are not Italy? The privacy warning radar is going nuts on this one.
Then finally, last but not least, the Italian government is also looking to entirely ban anonymity online. Opening up the prosecution flood gates. Everyone from annoyed citizens complaining about products, services, and politicians to everyday social network chatters and forum posters will become targets. This would become a lawsuit free-for-all. Plus, being that government does not give you the right to control the thoughts of your countrymen. This will definitely create problems for dissidents.
After reading all these stories I am starting to believe that the ghost of Mussolini has risen and started to regain control of the Italian government. These are certainly scary markers. Especially because the politicians are taking most of their queues from corporations that are trying to serve their own interests and to hell with everyone else. Europe is becoming colder and darker. Science and reason are sounding more and more scarce. Along with morality.
Look for unexplained disappearances and mysterious arrests in the future. Sounds an awful lot like the kind of things the Nazi’s did. I would recommend that anyone tread lightly in Italy.
This article is based off the one found at: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090504/0148494730.shtml
Tags: Human Rights, Italy, legalese, Net Neutrality, Patents, the internet
Something rather horrible was just brought to my attention. It is the story about a 16 year old boy named Ashton Lundeby who was arrested in the middle of the night by a team of FBI and local law enforcement officers. Now an arrest of someone so young isn’t really news-worthy these days (shameful as that may be), but what makes this case special is that Ashton, arrested on Feb 15th of 2009, is still being held with little to no access to his parents, friends, or even a lawyer.
Ashton has been accused of making multiple bomb threats from internet-based phone calls (using Voice-Over-IP). The FBI then did an IP address trace that led to Ashton’s personal computer. With this information they gathered a search and arrest warrant for him and barged into his house in the middle of the night, guns out, to arrest him. There is a huge problem with their evidence that lead to the arrest, but more on that later. This boy’s basic rights as granted by the Bill Of Rights has been violated. The most obvious right being violated here is sixth amendment which states:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”
He has been denied a speedy and public trial for sure, especially the public part. His family has not been given much access to him, a gag order has been put on the case, there is no information for public record, and details about the charges are being hidden behind the Patriot Act. Without such details it is difficult to build a case to defend him. It would also seem that his 4th amendment rights may also have been violated, though without more details it is hard to discern if this was an unreasonable seizure of property.
Unfortunately the details on this case are sketchy, so that even if the FBI was fully justified in their actions they have also made sure that it is difficult to trust anything they say. Making people even more concerned that we are heading towards becoming a police state. However, even if the threats made did justify their actions, the evidence (from what I have read so far) seems to be pretty disputable. The evidence as far as I can tell that they have is an IP address.
IP addresses help identify a computer or other internet device or server on the internet and act almost like a mailing address. The problem with IP address tracking is that not only do most internet providers use dynamic IPs, which are regularly updated and replaced with a new one users log in/out or as their computers just automatically refresh its IP address. So these floating addresses make it difficult to pin down who had which IP address at what time. To make matters worse these addresses can be spoofed or faked to make a computer look like a different computer on the internet. Which means just about anyone could have highjacked his IP address and used it for nefarious purposes (though I doubt they knew who it would be associated with).
It is frightening to think that our government can get away with whisking away citizens, especially children, to undisclosed locations for no particular reason at all and hold them indefinitely. To read more on this case please view the links at the bottom of this post.
References:
Tags: Constitutional Rights, Human Rights, Justice, legalese, Patriot Act, the internet
As some of you (anyone that has read the about me section) know, I am a web developer and as such I have become involved in open source projects (the PHP that runs this website for starters). One of the most frustrating things about open source is finding a way to monetize it.
So far I have seen most services offered around an open source project to make money for the creators. These services usually include tutorials, customizations, hosting, technical support, and other offerings that usually require a lot of extra work on the creators part that is above and beyond the making and upgrading of the software that they created in the first place. Thus they have to do double the work to earn money. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes the developing groups can pair up with other companies or projects and share profits or get advertising profits, but those models are hit or miss.
Most programmers have a favorite text editor or IDE to use to develop their application(s). Mine happens to be an editor for Windows called E Text Editor. It is an application that was inspired by my favorite Mac OS-based text editor TextMate. I have been using this editor for about a year and a half and I absolutely love it. So when the owner/creator decided to make his product open source using a new business model that will not only still monetize it for himself, but also for others, I was thrilled and excited.
Alexander, the creator, is testing a brand new business model that will open source most of his code except the core, which includes his licensing system (to discourage pirating). It allows others to contribute and earn based on a trust metric. As they earn more trust and contribute more they will gain access to more and more code. Eventually even gaining access to the core.
This is great for several reasons. The first and foremost is that the development has been stagnating because of a new addition to his family. This would allow others to pickup where he left off and improve what they want to improve. This means that the community a large will see more frequent bug fixes and improvements because many more people will be contributing on a regular basis. Secondly it will allow those people to get paid for their work. Which should encourage even more contributions. Third, this experiment could possibly applied to other software applications and if successful could change the way the open source community operates. Fourth, not only could this model be applied to software, but also in other industries such as the failing newspaper industry that has been whining about the internet changing things from the way they used to be in the “good’ol days”.
I welcome new ideas for business models, especially those that allow the community around a business to interact with it closely. Years ago I heard many clamorings about how open source could never work in a business model and that it would eventually fail. These clamorings have died down quiet a bit since the 90’s, especially since Linux has proven itself such a strong survivor of this. Unfortunately I am having trouble finding any links to such stories.
So far the open sourcing of the text editor has led to a Linux version of the application as well as several bug fixes. I am curious to see where this goes, especially since Alexander put his business on the line to test out this new model. I hope that other businesses take notes and try to learn something useful from this experiment.
Tags: business models, Economics, open source, programming, the internet
After the last few articles that I have written I thought that things couldn’t get much worse. I thought they would at least give it a couple weeks before taking another shot a stomping on consumer rights. Boy was I wrong.
Today we received news about a small town in North Carolina called Wilson. This town of about 47,000 residents had long complained about the price of cable TV, phone, and internet offered by Time Warner and Embarq. The only service providers in the little town. At first the town approached the providers about working with them on cutting the costs for residents. But the companies refused, unwilling to cut into their profit margins. So the resourceful city of Wilson took it upon themselves to find other solutions to their problem. In the end they found it cheaper to build their own provider network for the town and provide the services near cost to residents. This left residents paying about $99 a month for basic cable (81 channels), 10mbps broadband internet, and unlimited long distance to anywhere in the US and Canada. The city of Wilson also offered higher levels of service for considerably less than what either Time Warner or Embarq offered the same services at. They even offered a 20mbps premium service and a higher tier of 100mbps. Both of which are much higher than the top end 15mbps service offered by both companies.
After losing their business to the city, Time Warner and Embarq have now set themselves on a mission to prevent this from ever happening again. To accomplish this they have decided to lobby the state legislature of North Carolina to make it illegal for municipalities to setup their own telecommunications and content services. Not only that but they are also trying to make it impossible for such services to get funding from the broadband portion of the national Stimulus Act that was passed recently. Looks like companies and lobbyists are trying to write laws to help line their pockets.
Embarq shot back recently saying that it has the right to make money. They claim that they have to keep costs so high to ensure a better customer experience. Yet they completely ignore the fact that in the technology industry the costs of equipment keep going down while the performance, features, and quality keep going up. What this means is that while they do regular equipment replacements, the equipment they are installing is more powerful and can handle higher bandwidth needs all for less than the previous equipment cost. They are not running out of capacity, they don’t need more money to upgrade their equipment, they are just being greedy. Instead of trying to level the playing field and competing on equal ground with local service like a normal capitalistic environment would require, they have decided that they want to be the only one on the field. They want legally enforced monopolies (which, by legal definition, are illegal) where ever they setup shop.
This reminds me of the city-wide wireless internet service that Philadelphia tried to setup years ago. It too was lobbied against by cable and telecommunications companies and was just barely allowed to happen.
The news doesn’t stop with the city of Wilson today though. Another story came to light about a cable provider called RCN. RCN has decided to raise its rates AND forcefully “upgrade” all of its customers to a higher tier. Then they charge their customers a $5 downgrade fee to go back down to lower tiers of service. So either they trick you into paying more on a monthly basis or they charge you to restore your service to a lower tier. Nice, it is great to see how lack of competition is forcing cable companies across America to improve the customer experience. Now I have to ask, how terrible does your service have to be that you have to resort to trickery just to keep you profits on target? Maybe, just maybe you may want to consider offering… oh, I don’t know… BETTER service with more features that people WANT. How hard is it to keep improving with the pace of technology and the lowering costs of equipment? Is there such a thing as an altruistic for-profit cable company….
Nevermind, I shouldn’t have even asked. Back to Time Warner again… So now that the tiered and capped broadband has been shelved, for now, Time Warner has decided to rethink rolling out system upgrades in cities where it wanted to roll out bandwidth caps. Because they just couldn’t afford to install new equipment as part of a regular schedule that costs less than the previous generation but offers much better speeds unless they started charging their customers inordinate amounts for their internet service. Oh wait, they could, but instead they have decided to act like children and refuse to maintain their services while they don’t get what they want (a lot more money). Oh I am proud to be a part of a country where a software company can be fined for having an illegal monopoly (Microsoft), a telephone company (Southwestern Bell) can be halved for having an illegal monopoly, and cable companies are paid more for having an illegal monopoly. Makes perfect sense.
Tags: Broadband, cable companies, Cable Internet, Consumer Rights, the internet, Time Warner
Last week was a busy one for not only Time Warner, but also the cable industry. First Time Warner released a statement about the new national broadband initiative to which the FCC has taken on a “consultative role”. In the statement they essentially tell the FCC that the nation needs to stick with worrying about broadband deployment on this project and to completely forget any inkling of net neutrality. Now this doesn’t sound like such a big deal to most because the goal of the project is to get broadband internet access to rural areas and help connect the rest of America. However, you must read more into this.
You see Time Warner, like most cable companies, don’t like the concept of net neutrality at all because it would prevent them from leveraging the control of their customers internet access to force feed them their services and products. So obviously this means that Time Warner sees the FCC’s position on the subject as a threat to their negative position on net neutrality. They see that the FCC could recommend that restrictions be put on the new networks that include forcing net neutrality on the network operators. So they are trying to make dang sure that the FCC backs off the issue long enough for them to construct their own rules and policies for the network.
The second news-worthy event that happened was that Time Warner released a press release stating that they will be backing off the tests for creating absurdly expensive broadband caps that they were going to implement this summer in Texas and New York. I would like to note that they have backed off, but not entirely ended the idea within the company. Instead the plan is on hold while they “educate customers” on broadband caps. Essentially they are waiting for a successful PR campaign to soothe customers and ease them onto the idea. Hopefully most people will see through the efforts, but I’m not holding my breathe.
Then a news story came out discussing broadband caps versus bandwidth throttling and comparing broadband providers in the US with those in the UK. Now I find it interesting that in the UK users will get a few nice emails asking them to cut back on usage during peak hours when they use too much. Then when they don’t comply, instead of cutting them off or charging them a boatload in overage charges, they just throttle down their connection speed. Seems like a lot more reasonable approach than scheming and planning new ways to pump more money out of their customers.
Finally, just to rub salt in our wounds, a report comparing broadband access costs and features around the world came out that shows that if you lived in Stockholm, Sweden you would be paying $11 a month for 100mbps internet connections that are fiber-based residential services and uncapped. Now the reason for this is because they have a municipal network that reaches every block of the city. Then they lease this network to service providers and since all providers use the same lines and don’t need millions in capital to get started they get to compete on equal footing. This encourages fair competition and real value for consumers. Unfortunately here in the United States companies get to have monopolies on metropolitan areas and face little to no competition. It would be nice if we could break the stranglehold that providers here have on our politicians.
Tags: Broadband, Consumer Rights, FCC, Net Neutrality, Technology, Time Warner
For those of you that have been following tech news for the last year or so it is not news that Time Warner is experimenting with and pushing metered billing. What they want to do is set data usage caps and offer customers different tiers of capping and pricing so that they can choose a plan that “fits” their internet usage. More recently the Chief Operations Officer, Landel Hobbs, has been biting back against the overwhelming number of critics to this plan. He was quoted as saying:
“Our current pricing plans require all users to pay the same amount, whether they check email once a month or download six movies a day. As the amount of usage has dramatically diverged among users, this is becoming inherently unfair and not the way most consumers want to pay for goods they consume.”
This sounds all well and good except when you look at the facts they don’t support this statement at all. With streaming media services such as YouTube, Hulu, and Pandora becoming ever more common and online gaming and social communities sprouting up everywhere the average internet usage by individuals has increased considerably over the past few years. As such, internet usage hasn’t so much as diverged but jointly skyrocketed. Now the statement above, pulled from http://a.longreply.com/101892, suggests that users don’t want to continue to have unlimited access for one common price. It, and the plans of Time Warner, suggest that people want limits on how much they can download. In the letter linked to above it suggests that people would not only want these limits, but also several options for these limits.
Now first of all I have yet to meet ANYONE who would, after years use a service for a flat rate that offered unlimited usage, WANT to move to a pricing scheme that not only stops being unlimited, but will also (more than likely) increase the monthly fees they will be paying to use that service in the same way as before. For years cable internet providers have provided unlimited access to the internet for a flat rate. Now some of them have decided that they want to squeeze more money out of us (during a world-wide recession no less) by severely limiting usage caps, charging higher rates, and charging excessive overage fees.
I understand that ISPs have to pay for the amount of bandwidth that their systems use on a daily basis and that the usage rates have increased immensely in recent years. They are now complaining that they will have to pay for equipment upgrades to maintain their network capacities. So it would seem fair that they pass those charges on to their customers right? Your first reaction may be to agree with this until you find out what they are not telling you.
First of all they are not even close to hitting the capacity that they are capable of. The United States has the largest groupings of what is called “dark” fiber optic cable backbone cabling in the world. This cabling crosses the entire country stopping in every major city and its capacity is mostly unused, hence the “dark fiber” label. The last estimates I heard were below 10% capacity. The next thing they are not telling anyone is that the “equipment upgrades” they are complaining about are part of the standard upgrade cycle that they have kept for years. The new equipment they are installing actually costs significantly less than the older equipment and provides immense speed improvements for wide area networks (not using the backbone cabling) without any significant changes to the current infrastructure.
There is, of course, more that Time Warner and other cable companies are not telling the public. They are working on creating their own online video and audio delivery services that won’t deduct data usage from these new data caps. Which means they are trying to monopolize online video and audio services by forcing you to pay for them one way or the other.
Now most reasonable people would think that it is fine for them to change their plans, give usage limitations to prevent abuse, and offer better price schedules. The problem is most people don’t have a clue how much data they consume every month and the cable internet providers are not telling anyone who calls and asks. So people won’t know what plan would fit them. Even if they did, if they watch more than 3 or 4 videos online per month they would easily exceed the 40GB limit that they have imposed for the highest capped tier. There goes that Netflix watch instantly subscription. That plan goes for around $55 per month my last recollections. Oh, but they are offering an “unlimited” plan… for $150 per month. That is almost triple the current monthly plans (I know because I have their Road Runner Turbo service).
What is more is that in most areas they have a monopoly on service. Many cities and counties years ago limited the number of cable TV providers in a given area to one. Due, of course, to inept politicians looking to line their pockets. So consumers don’t have much of a choice, either cable TV or satellite and the latter doesn’t work at all in bad weather and have been known for their cost prohibative internet plans. Of course you can crawl under a rock and go without an internet connection. But don’t think that many people would be willing to do that.
So to think that consumers “want” to go through the kind of hell this would create is just lunacy and a great imagination. Now I have already called and emailed Time Warner about this and expressed, in no uncertain terms, that if they roll out this scheme in my area I will take ALL of my business elsewhere. I am lucky enough to live in an area that offers one cable TV alternative. I would recommend that you do the same if you are a customer of theirs.
Oh and ignore those ads from the cable companies about Net Neutrality. Despite what Comcast says (my parents have them) it is not all “mumbo jumbo” and “big words meant to fool you”. Net Neutrality is about preventing internet providers from filtering websites that offer competitive services. It is about not allowing them to dictate to the consumer what they can and can’t browse on the internet. They are fighting Net Neutrality because without it they strong-arm you into getting all your content from them or strong-arm websites into paying them for access to that ISPs customer base.
-Pjerky
References:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090408/2349524449.shtml
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-COO-Metered-Billing-Is-What-Consumers-Want-101769
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
Tags: Cable Internet, Consumer Rights, Laws, Net Neutrality, Politicians, TechDirt, Time Warner, Usage Caps
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