Articles about ISPs

Please take my money, Google. Tap the vein right here if blood is the currency you need. I am ready, willing, and over-excited. If you disappoint, I understand, though. My city is a brick wall when it comes to new commerce. It's regulation central. So good luck to you.

This afternoon I received email from the Google Fiber team that stopped my heart: "We wanted you to be among the first to hear the news. Today we announced we're exploring bringing Fiber to San Diego". Hell, yeah, baby. Sign me up. Which up-for-reelection-politician needs me and other native and transplanted San Diegans to be thorns in the butt? Give us more speed than we possibly need for prices we probably can't afford.

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If you are a Verizon Wireless subscriber and use its 3G data plan, there's some good news for you. You know how Verizon Wireless loves to throttle speed on its 3G data plans. Well, the subsidiary of Verizon Communications, has stopped doing it. And it has actually been a while.

The company quietly updated its “video optimization” page to note the following: "Beginning in 2011", it notes, "to optimize our network, we managed data connection speeds for a small subset of customers — those who are in the top 5% of data users and have 3G devices on unlimited data plans — and only in places and at times when the network was experiencing high demand. We discontinued this practice in June, 2015".

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Moving from one broadband provider to another has long been something of a chore. Starting this weekend (June 20), switchers in the UK will no longer have to go through the hassle of requesting a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC) from their current supplier, as their new ISP will be able to handle the entire process from start to finish.

This should not only help to speed up the process of switching provider, but also eliminate the pestering from ISPs to stay with them. The new rules do not cover all ISPs, just those that use the Openreach network -- this includes major players such as BT, Plusnet, TalkTalk, and Sky -- but it should still make life easier for a lot of people.

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File this in the "When More is Less" folder.

My college-age daughter is moving home, at least for the summer, and my wife and I are scrambling preparations. One unexpected: Changing Internet Service Providers. Our Cox connection comes into the bedroom where my daughter will go. Access from the main living area would require new wiring that the landlord won't allow. I can understand why he wouldn't want the fancy molding drilled up. We already know that AT&T U-verse Internet is live in the living room.

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The Net Neutrality debate has been rumbling on for quite some time now, but today something of a milestone has been reached. After the campaign gained the support of President Obama, Twitter, and many others, today was the Federal Communications Commission vote on a number of proposals put forward by chairman Tom Wheeler.

It is a victory for Net Neutrality and a great step towards ensuring that the internet remain open and free from controls by companies or government. The policy states, among other things, that ISPs may not charge for prioritization of web traffic. The vote was far from being a landslide. Two Republicans opposed to the policy changes kept the result to a 3-2 vote in favor of the proposals.

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The net neutrality debate has been raging for some time and Barack Obama has stepped into the fray, voicing his support for a free and open internet. More than this, the president is calling for broadband to be reclassified under Title II of the Telecommunications Act which would give the FCC greater powers of regulation. His statement has come as bad news for cable companies who have expressed a desire to create a two-tiered internet.

But while some providers have suggested that they would like to be able to offer a faster service to customers willing and able to pay more money each month, Obama is calling for a largely unfettered internet. As well as eliminating the idea of fast lanes, he calls for no blocking of legal content, no throttling, and greater ISP transparency.

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Every month streaming video provider Netflix announces its speed results for the biggest ISPs in the US and other nations. The report is aimed to let customers know why their video may be dodgy and also to praise those that get it right. The order tends to vary each and every time, but there is some relative consistency seen in the results.

This time around, the October report reveals that Verizon Fios remains in the top spot. Comcast also retained its position, though sixth is still not great given the provider is getting paid by Netflix to provide the best service. In between those positions you will find Cablevision, Bright House, Cox and Charter.

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Access to fast, reliable Internet empowers people to learn for themselves. It gives them the means to solve their own problems. It eliminates one of the obstacles that stands in the way of the oppressed knowing how others have freed themselves in the past. Unfortunately, we found that low-income areas with the most to gain from access to the world’s knowledge, continue to lag behind in Internet speeds.

On average, states whose populations are made up of people with lower incomes living in rural areas are likely to have the slowest Internet speeds. In order to gain a greater understanding of the role of wealth in regards to Internet speeds, we compared average Internet speeds for all 50 states with several financial factors.

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More than three million comments, from consumers, businesses and other organizations, have been submitted in response to the controversial US debate over net neutrality.

The controversy has arisen over whether Internet service providers, such as Comcast and Verizon, should be allowed to introduce fast lanes, delivering paid-for traffic to users more quickly.

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