Rob Pegoraro

Alarm Sounded on Expiring Affordable-Internet Subsidy

Most of the concern over the impending demise of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)—the federal subsidy that’s made broadband cheaper or free for more than 23 million households—has focused on the people about to have a new hole drilled in their monthly budgets. Attendees at a DC conference hosted by an association of smaller telecom firms feel their pain: “Half of our problem in this nation is not accessibility, it's affordability,” said ACA Connects President and CEO Patricia Jo Boyers, at the group’s 

Telecom companies ask for spectrum specifics as government representatives say 'stay tuned'

Recent telecommunications conferences have yielded one consistent disconnect – between wireless carriers seeking details about future spectrum allocations and government representatives offering vague assurances of better bandwidth to come. Consider the quizzing of Scott Blake Harris, senior spectrum advisor and director of national spectrum strategy at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, at ForumGlobal's 12th Americas Spectrum Management Conference in Washington on October 10.

What to know before you open your Comcast TV or internet bill: Rates are going up (again)

If you’re a Comcast subscriber, it’s not the most wonderful time of the year: The cable giant is raising its rates again. In a move subscribers have seen before – most recently in 2018, 2019, 2020 , and 2021 – Comcast’s TV service will see big increases in fine-print fees that it doesn’t advertise, while the large-print rates for its broadband will inch up by a smaller amount. Comcast didn’t provide specific numbers for the TV fee hikes, but journalist Phillip Swann, who covers the video business at the TV Answer Man site, recently reported figures for some markets.

Tech for good, evil and companionship at Web Summit

The future-of-tech conversations at Web Summit  in Lisbon could have played on a split screen.

How Verizon 'fixed wireless' and T-Mobile home broadband is converting cable customers

The broadband landscape looks different after the two biggest wireless carriers added more than two-thirds of a million subscribers to their residential 5G-based services. However, the two biggest cable providers both lost internet customers. On July 22, Verizon reported that it had gained 168,000 new residential customers to reach 384,000 total home subscribers for its “fixed wireless” service.

Fiber Homes works with fiber-optic broadband providers to verify the access available at a home

A new site aims to tackle a problem that in a more logical universe would not exist: real-estate listings that offer only vague details about the internet service available at an abode or don’t even address that issue. Fiber Homes promises less-chancy connectivity details in house listings. The Columbia (SC)-based site works with fiber-optic broadband providers to verify the access available at a home.

Charter CEO: The new bundle is broadband and mobile

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge remains a believer in the bundle — just with different parts.

Which wireless carrier has the best coverage where you're going?

If you’d like a more honest assessment of whether AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon Wireless – or none of the above – will offer decent connectivity, you should seek an outside opinion instead of consulting the carriers' coverage maps. Some resources to do so are:

Time to cut internet cords: T-Mobile, Verizon up their bids to be your next home broadband

Cord cutting is coming to home internet access, not just pay TV – but not every embittered broadband customer will be able to fire their current provider and switch to residential wireless from T-Mobile and Verizon. Both carriers offer connectivity at speeds that may not match those of cable internet but should be fast enough for many home uses. They also don’t inflict cable’s data caps or modem-rental fees.

Comcast’s 1.2 TB data cap seems like a ton of data—until you factor in remote work

Comcast will subject all its residential broadband customers to a 1.2 terabyte monthly data cap. The threshold that Comcast will start enforcing does, indeed, allow for a lot of online life before getting socked by surcharges of $10 for each extra 50 GB, up to $100 a month.

AT&T shelving DSL may leave hundreds of thousands hanging by a phone line

On Oct. 1, AT&T stopped selling digital-subscriber-line (DSL) connections, stranding many existing subscribers on those low-speed links and leaving new residents of DSL-only areas without any wired broadband. “We’re beginning to phase out outdated services like DSL and new orders for the service will no longer be supported after October 1,” a corporate statement sent beforehand read. “Current DSL customers will be able to continue their existing service or where possible upgrade to our 100% fiber network.”

Still no affordable fix for a broadband internet connection just out of reach

A few thousand feet can feel much farther when that distance separates a house from the closest wired broadband – and the cost to extend connectivity reaches tens of thousands of dollars.

Coronavirus crunch may expose weakness in your broadband plan: much slower upload speeds

Binge-watching in high-def isn’t an act of irresponsibility in a moment of crisis. “The internet as a whole is fine,” agrees Doug Suttles, CEO of the bandwidth-measurement firm Ookla. “It can handle a ton.”  Coronavirus-induced traffic during the day still doesn’t exceed the nightly peaks your internet provider should have already designed its systems around.

Why ‘rural broadband’ may no longer be an oxymoron

Traditionally, the story of rural broadband in America has ended with a two-letter word: no. No, the local cable or phone monopoly isn’t going to extend service to this county or that town.

Your internet provider knows where you've been. How to keep your browsing more private

If you use Firefox, your web browsing habits will become a bit more mysterious to your internet provider. Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox web browser, will make this happen by switching US desktop Firefox users to an encrypted form of the directory assistance behind all internet navigation. This change involves the Domain Name Service, which lets you get anywhere online by translating your request for a site into the numeric Internet Protocol, or IP, address matching the computer that will deliver the web page in question.

5G’s rollout is confusing, uneven, and rife with problems

2020 looks like it will be your year to get 5G—but only in the sense of having that signal on your phone, not in the sense of knowing quite what it’s supposed to be or using it to its full potential. A new report from the network analysis firm Opensignal advises that while this revamp of mobile broadband is poised to reach far more of the US, it will do so in ways that may leave both carriers and their customers feeling some wireless whiplash.

Can 5G replace everybody’s home broadband?

When it comes to the possibility of home broadband competition, we want to believe. And in the case of 5G mobile broadband, wireless carriers want us to believe, too. But whether or not technological and commercial realities will reward that faith remains unclear.

5G won’t change everything, or at least probably not your things

The long-touted fifth generation (5G) of wireless communications is not magic. We’re sorry if unending hype over the world-changing possibilities of 5G has led you to expect otherwise.

5G is going to save journalism! Maybe! (Don’t hold your breath)

On Nov 20, AT&T announced a partnership with the Washington Post to weave 5G technology into the paper’s reporting operations. "Teams at both companies will experiment with new formats and see what immersive journalism can do better as the world is increasingly connected to 5G," AT&T said.  “The Post plans to experiment with reporters using millimeter wave 5G+ technology to transmit their stories, photos and videos faster and more reliably," the newspaper said.

AT&T’s latest smartphone plans offer new ways to limit 'unlimited' data

AT&T, the latest to retire old mostly-unlimited plans, did so only 20 months after the June 2018 introduction of its previous offers. The new ones – announced days before the Federal Trade Commission fined AT&T $60 million for not disclosing speed limits on plans sold five years ago as unlimited – require factoring in the same three variables as the other nationwide carriers’ unlimited-ish deals.

OneWeb wants to blanket the planet in high-speed satellite broadband

OneWeb is talking a big game in satellite-delivered internet access—almost the size of this planet, to be more precise. OneWeb plans to surpass existing satellite-broadband firms by flying below them and in vastly larger numbers. Instead of rocketing a few large satellites all the way to geostationary Earth orbit (GEO)—22,236 miles up, at which point the satellite’s orbital period keeps it locked above one point on the equator—the company will launch hundreds of satellites in much lower orbits.

Vint Cerf, a ‘father of the internet’, still isn’t completely sold on 5G

A Q&A with Vint Cerf. 

First question, 5G as a broadband alternative for homes and businesses. You sounded a little down on that.

It’s only because I’m worried about 6 gigahertz versus 28 gigahertz. The studies that have been done from the DoD show the 28 gigahertz is very costly, still requires a great deal of fiber interconnect, and might put us in a poor competitive position with regard to serving the rest of the world.

Why your cable company might be happy to see you stop subscribing to its TV service: Data Caps.

If your cable operator invites you to dump its TV service and switch to online streaming, its internet rates may hide a surprise that will be painful to you and profitable to your internet provider. Data caps limiting how much you can download per month are an unpleasant reality at too many providers, but small cable services can be significantly less generous with them. Those same companies also have the hardest time keeping programming costs in check and increasingly lose money on video.