Its been a while now since word got out that Comcast for sure and possibly other large ISPs were filtering and throttling traffic to their customers. Now Steve Musil over on C/Net is reporting on a report in the Register that Google will be releasing tools that they have developed which will allow users to monitor and identify this type of filtering by your broadband carrier. I am far from a Google fan boy, but I have to give Google a pat on the back for this one. 

The ISPs have tried to stop the government from stepping in here and preventing them from limiting and filtering traffic like this. It is part of the whole net neutrality thing.  The ISPs response is the government doesn't have to step in, the market will take care of itself. Yeah, just like the oil companies say about the price of gas. 

Ultimately I think the ISPs know they are going to lose this fight. Their next play is to start charging you based upon how much bandwidth you use.  We have already seen the noise around that one. It reminds me of my web hosting days.  Some hosts charged you by the bandwidth you used per month. Others gave you unlimited bandwidth but put you on a crowded machine where you had to fight for CPU time and hooked that up to a small pipe that was saturated.  So you did not pay for extra bandwidth, but you couldn't use any either.  Bottom line after a long period of access being cheap and plentiful, the ISP game is back.  You can pay them now or pay them later, but you will pay them.

Its been a while now since word got out that Comcast for sure and possibly other large ISPs were filtering and throttling traffic to their customers. Now Steve Musil over on C/Net is reporting on a report in the Register that Google will be releasing tools that they have developed which will allow users to monitor and identify this type of filtering by your broadband carrier. I am far from a Google fan boy, but I have to give Google a pat on the back for this one. 

The ISPs have tried to stop the government from stepping in here and preventing them from limiting and filtering traffic like this. It is part of the whole net neutrality thing.  The ISPs response is the government doesn't have to step in, the market will take care of itself. Yeah, just like the oil companies say about the price of gas. 

Ultimately I think the ISPs know they are going to lose this fight. Their next play is to start charging you based upon how much bandwidth you use.  We have already seen the noise around that one. It reminds me of my web hosting days.  Some hosts charged you by the bandwidth you used per month. Others gave you unlimited bandwidth but put you on a crowded machine where you had to fight for CPU time and hooked that up to a small pipe that was saturated.  So you did not pay for extra bandwidth, but you couldn't use any either.  Bottom line after a long period of access being cheap and plentiful, the ISP game is back.  You can pay them now or pay them later, but you will pay them.

The writer says that air-to-ground service is like Wi-Fi in the sky, but it's using cellular data standards, and so it's much more like mobile broadband in the sky. He also writes that there's 3 Mbps, which is the combined up-and-down estimated throughput of AirCell, the only firm that can operate such service in the U.S. for commercial flights. The next graf mentions that satellite-based Internet access is coupled with, uh, 802.11b (yes, B) access points. I think that's an error, innit?

And the analysis of JetBlue's move is incorrect. The purchase of Verizon's Airfone network is about positioning equipment, not using out-of-date gear that can't be employed for phone calls on commercial airliners.

I'd suggest a more appropriate metaphor be used than the one in this sentence: "[Lufthansa] hopes the experience is more fruitful than its ill-fated 2004 deal with Boeing's Connexion service, which crashed and burned when Boeing shut it down two years later." Beyond the distasteful reference, Connexion was shut down in an orderly fashion, and Lufthansa was one carrier that loved it, and tried to get it to stay in operation, and, failing that, to build a consortium to revive it.

The article finishes with a set of incorrect conclusions:

"There hasn't been much news about how airlines plan to charge for these services." In fact, we know pretty much that it will cost roughly $6 an hour, $10 for a 3-hour flight or less, and $13 for a flight longer than 3 hours. That's from Aircell in various statements, and it appears to be roughly the charges expected from its competitors in the US. In Europe, mobile calls and texting prices are also known: about US$2.50 per minute for calls, and something like 25 to 50 cents for text messages, not much more than the egregious ground pricing.

"If the industry's cash crunch gets much worse, in-flight broadband might be mothballed before it even gets off the ground." It's unclear what part of the expense the airlines are bearing. In my discussions with firms over the last five years, it's clear to me that this round involves the providers bearing more of the cost--and hence the lower installation cost involved--but also retaining more of the revenue.

Wi-Fi a-go-go onboard buses: The New York Daily News checks in on the trend to put Internet access via Wi-Fi on board East Coast buses. The article notes that Greyhound's new sidewalk-pickup BoltBus service among corridor cities has provoked the long-running Chinatown buses to bolt on Wi-Fi as well. The Chinatown Bus Association says here that their bus tickets are cheaper and thus more competitive--but one of their members has already added Wi-Fi, and others are considering it. MegaBus also serves the coast and has Internet access, as well as DC2NY. The biggest problem, though? Passengers demand AC outlets, and only BoltBus has them on every bus. LimoLiner (New York to Boston) isn't mentioned here, but is one of the earliest firms I'm aware of with on-board Internet, starting in 2004, and they also have power to every seat.

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According to this article T-Mobile is none to happy about Starbucks and ATT offering free wi-fi to customers.  They have filed suit against Starbucks, claiming that according an agreement between the three companies, the transition from T-Mobile's pay for access to the ATT free access was supposed to go at a much slower rate, only it seems ATT and Starbucks have rushed things through and T-Mobile is suing mad about the lost revenue.

T-Mobile should have seen this coming. The day the ATT deal was signed, any more revenue T-Mobile ground out of their Starbucks relationship was froth on the coffee.  It is hard to beat free.

In my mind, taking Starbucks out of the T-mobile hotspot world, what is left?  Some airports perhaps, but increasingly T-mobile is a 2nd or 3rd tier carrier in the US anyway.

Image via Wikipedia

According to this article T-Mobile is none to happy about Starbucks and ATT offering free wi-fi to customers.  They have filed suit against Starbucks, claming that according an agreement between the three companies, the transition from T-Mobile's pay for access to the ATT free access was supposed to go at a much slower rate, only it seems ATT and Starbucks have rushed things through and T-Mobile is suing mad about the lost revenue.

T-Mobile should have seen this coming. The day the ATT deal was signed, any more revenue T-Mobile ground out of their Starbucks relationship was froth on the coffee.  It is hard to beat free.

In my mind, taking Starbucks out of the T-mobile hotspot world, what is left?  Some airports perhaps, but increasingly T-mobile is a 2nd or 3rd tier carrier in the US anyway.