Internet neutrality, the fun continues

The FCC has begun the process of making 'net neutrality a requirement for Internet providers, something I agree with wholeheartedly. You would think that preserving the established, expected rights of consumers (read: voters and taxpayers) would be something your average elected official would be all over... which means John McCain is something other than average. As soon as the FCC started the gears turning, he's attempting to bring the process to a halt, introducing a bill to prevent the FCC from pursuing the issue (link). My favorite part... he has the gall to call this bill the Internet Freedom Act (that's freedom for the Internet providers, not you, citizen).

Oh well, I can at least find a little glimmer of hope... the various reactions to this act detailed in the article I linked to fall mostly where you would expect (rights groups and Democrats against, corporate executives and "free-market think tanks" against), but there's one Republican senator listed on the consumer-rights side. It's not much, but if one senator can see past the campaign contributions to take the side of the end user, maybe enough will to shut this stupidity down.

Marketing and honesty (as if!)

I've seen a slew of ads on TV lately from various grocery companies, each to the tune of "in these tough times, we're going to be nice guys and lower our prices for you." Funny how none of them are put forth as "sure, we've been gouging you for months/years now, but we decided that we couldn't survive doing that anymore, so we're dropping prices a little to try and suck you back in to our stores." Gotta love spin... why just say "new lower prices" when you can try to sell it as something you're doing out of the goodness of your corporate heart?

The fate of bad pizza

I was driving around town yesterday, and found myself driving north on Division, something to be avoided if you want to get where you're going in a timely fasion, when I saw a sign up ahead for Eatza Pizza. It's a chain (apparently nationwide, scarily) that has Spokane written all over it... an inexpensive, all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. I tried it once myself, at a location out in the Valley... once. Suffice it to say that, in my humble opinion, it was the worst pizza I have ever had the opportunity to eat, bland and bready... heck, the cheapest supermarket freezer pizzas are a step up.

I knew the Valley location had closed some time back, so I was curious as to how this site was holding up... and, since traffic was stop-and-go, I chanced a glance, figuring I'd see an empty storefront or maybe a few cars in the parking lot. What I saw was a lot scraped clean, down to the dirt, with the signpost still in place at the street. I'm sure it was just done for tax purposes by the property owners... but I can't help but imagine the owners deciding that the site was irrevocably tainted by the bad pizza, razing the structure and parking lot to the ground, and leaving the sign behind as a warning to other restaurateurs of the fate awaiting bad food.

Comcast - fixed, I think.

It's only fair that I close out the whole overbilling thing with a final report... I've got a bill in hand that shows that I got reimbursed enough to more than cover an entire month of charges, and that my ongoing charge for Internet access has been reduced. I've also been told that my cable modem is no longer marked as Comcast-owned... and I believe them, based on the fact that I had to reset my connection (and go through all the initial setup steps again) in order to receive that news by email. Apart from that minor glitch, it was well worth pursuing this problem with the Comcast Cares team... and I heartily recommend that, if you're using Comcast and have a problem with their service that normal channels cant handle, that you give them a shot. Of course, best good would be for their mainline tech support to improve to the point where a separate, special trouble-shooting team isn't necessary... but it's good they're there in the meantime.

Begun, the Net Neutrality Wars have

Wow... it's practically lightspeed for any branch of FedGov to move this fast. It's only been since July last year, when Comcast and the FCC got hot and bothered about what "reasonable" means, in a network-management sense, that I've been waiting for movement on the whole Net Neutrality issue... and Monday, it came, with the chairman of the FCC announcing the start of a process to enshrine in regulation the core tenets of NN, then going a step beyond and saying that he wants the new rules to apply to all Internet connections, including wireless phones.

Of course, it didn't take long for members of the Republican party to try and throw a spanner in the works. Their first attempt is to try to amend a bill in such a way as to make the FCC unable to spend any money on implementing these consumer protections (link). The ever-popular "tread lightly when it comes to new regulations" is quickly followed by "could stifle investment incentives", as put forth by one of the senators involved.

OK, now here's a fine example of why I am not a Republican (for the record, I'm not a Democrat either). I truly believe that companies providing a service have every right to price their service according to demand and the cost of that service. Where I differ from these Republicans is that I don't believe that service providers should be allowed to "water down" their offerings (without informed consent, at least) for users that abide by the rules of the service, in the name of protecting said users from those that break the rules. Neither do I believe that companies should be allowed to secretly interfere with the service they provide, especially when they do it to prop up other divisions of their company (VoIP and Internet video, to use Comcast as an example), in the name of safeguarding investments. If you want to invest in the current market leaders as a "safe" investment, great... if you want to invest in the Next Big Thing, hoping to make a killing, good on you. However, just because you're an investor, you have no right to assume that both investments are with the same company... or, if they are, that the investments in the future will allow for anything more than the continued survival of your cash cow.

Right, just a bit off-track there... let's see, wireless companies, of course, are also up-in-arms, complaining that open access rules will swamp their networks. I don't know first-hand, but I hear that's already pretty true for AT&T with the iPhone in some areas... but it's also a pretty moot point. We're back to that whole cost/demand equation (and side note: I'm sure texting is still insanely out of line with that concept)... if you have so many people using your service that you can't keep up, raise the price and invest (if possible) in improving your infrastructure. Will that mean that you lose some customers? Sure... but they will bog down your competitors, if they are still offering lower rates. Unless, of course, you're worried that your competitors will do the right thing, upgrade their infrastructure, and leave you in the dust... that's not your concern, right?

Wow, off-track and mildly combative, all in one post... OK, quick summary and finish. If you're offering Internet access, it's right that you be held to offering the whole Internet, unless you tell us in advance what you're not offering, and why. Companies have failed that test in the past, which is why regulation is needed (and please, no "it's just a few bad apples", you want to control problems before they become widespread, or worse, ingrained). If you can't operate under those conditions, be afraid... even if this change doesn't make it through FedGov this time, technology is changing ever faster, and your service will become obsolete someday soon. Whether you survive depends greatly on your ability to keep pace while keeping your customers content... and there's a whole new generation of tech-savvy types out there, waiting for you to disappoint them.

Comcast update

So, in case any of you were wondering, and since I don't have much else relevant to blog about this week, here's where the whole cable-modem thing sits right now: I did get a reply the very same night I posted my last entry, which was unexpected. The next day, we got down to the meat of the issue, verifying serial numbers, MAC addresses and the like... and I've been credited (so I'm told) the $3/month charge for the period I was charged up to this point, and should continue being credited for as long as necessary (expecting "a couple of weeks") while they update their inventory records to reflect that I actually do own my modem. I suspect that time frame includes looking for any physical evidence at the local office that I don't own the modem, but that's understandable enough.

What's not-so-understandable is that their chat technician got confused about when I started getting charged this rental fee... it wasn't March of last year, it was 28JUN08, which, if you look at the history of this blog, was just after I turned in my TV equipment. It was probably just an error on the part of some data entry critter... probably. At any rate, now it's just a little limbo-time while the wheels of bureaucracy grind away, if things go the way they should. If not, I'll be sure to rant some more another day! :)

From out of the blue, a Comcast rep!

I've heard of this sort of thing, but never seen it first hand... if you check the comments section of my prior post, there's a comment from a "ComcastCares1", offering expedited assistance. Being the cautious sort that I am, I checked the profile view (it's been around since Feb. '08) and sniffed around the edges of the proposal for potential scamminess... but I don't see any likely attack vector there. So, I've given it a shot... stay tuned for further developments!