July 2007 Archives

The SunRocket bankruptcy continues to generate controversy. I just received a press release saying that Nuvio is asking Cisco to unlock the Gizmo phones of stranded SunRocket customers.

This is a problem we've complained about for years. The FCC's data on broadband service in the U.S. is inadequate, making the FCC appear to be doing a better job than it actually is (of course, if the problem with the data was that it made the FCC look worse than it is, the FCC would have solved the problem instantly).

The biggest problem is the FCC's definition of broadband, which is: "transmission speeds exceeding 200 kilobits per second (Kbps), or 200,000 bits per second, in at least one direction", a speed so slow and out of date in most nations that you could not order it even if you wanted to.

But that's not the only problem. There's also the lazy manner in which the FCC decides whether or not your local area has broadband. The FCC says that a ZIP code has broadband if one person in that area has access to one broadband provider. The problem with flawed data is that it gives policy makers a false sense that the USA has a good broadband system. That's why we called our main article on this topic, Flawed FCC Data Guarantees Flawed Policy.

We wrote the article in 2003, and things have not gotten better.

The poorly handled bankruptcy of SunRocket continues, and once again, DSL Reports has the story. The site is reporting that SunRocket has finally spoken to customers. This is a positive development -- before now, it seemed that the company would die off without letting its customers know.

We published our VoIP Rankings today, and they show that SunRocket had a good position, based purely on subscriber count.

That is over, and it's not just SunRocket that's in trouble -- the entire VoIP industry could be harmed by these events.

Amid all of the foolish iPhone hype, there's one underlying fact that many seem to be ignoring: the network that the so-called "Jesus phone" runs on is terrible.

EarthLink is advertising "Freestanding DSL" service, and I think that's a great idea.

ISPs should be more aggressive in differentiating their DSL service from fraudband.

Share your stories -- if you've ever followed your gut.