Earlier this week Embarq responded to a Congressional inquiry into their recent trial of NebuAD user-tracking ad technology, and the sale of user browsing data. While the letter clarified that Embarq's definition of "informing" users about the trial involved burying fine print in their privacy policy, it really didn't answer any of the specific questions put forth to them by the Congressional inquiry. It did, however, take ample time to insult consumer intelligence by suggesting the sale of user browsing data "empowers" customers.

Embarq has e-mailed me a second, more informative response (pdf) from their CEO to Congress. The letter confirms that Embarq's trial of the technology was conducted on 26,000 subscribers at a single point of presence (POP) in Gardner, Kansas. Embarq says Gardner was chosen because it was their smallest pop, and due to its proximity to "qualified" technical staff.

Embarq says that of the 26,000 customers impacted, only fifteen opted out. That's likely because unless those users made a habit of digging through the Embarq privacy policy fine print once a week, they'd never know the trial was taking place. Embarq again repeats that they believe their fine print notification adheres to FTC standards -- though the FTC standards aren't exactly robust.

While it appears that NebuAD's ineffective opt-out system could violate several federal wiretap and privacy laws, Embarq states that their own internal legal review of the technology found it "lawful and otherwise permissible." They also repeat claims that any data collected was anonymous and not retained.

While this letter is much more informative than the previous one, it's still fails to address the fact that NebuAD's cookie-based opt-out system doesn't actually opt users out of data collection (just targeted ad delivery). It also doesn't go out of its way to concede that e-mailing impacted customers might have been a better bet than burying notification in fine print.
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Britain's six largest Internet providers (BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse) have collectively agreed to a plan by the entertainment industry that would have them send letters to subscribers informing them that their P2P use is being monitored. The plan does not involve ISPs terminating the accounts of any users -- yet. According to Reuters UK, the plan could still evolve into a "three strikes" policy, where a user faces account termination on the third offense.
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Originally slated for last year, AT&T has been working hard on testing a compression scheme that allows them to offer two HD streams, two SD streams, and 10Mbps worth of data via the average 25Mbps most U-Verse VDSL customers receive. In May, AT&T confirmed to me that they are now offering two HD and two SD streams in some markets, but wouldn't specify any solid launch dates. Yesterday in a conference call, AT&T CFO Richard Lindner stated they'd be offering dual HD streams in all markets by the end of the third quarter. The next big thing for U-Verse users to wait for? Pair bonding and faster speeds.
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According to a post in this morning's Wall Street Journal, Sprint is planning to sell nearly all of their cell towers to a private-equity-backed firm called TowerCo. The deal will bring a $670 million cash infusion to the struggling company, which they'll be using to pay down some of the company's $24 billion debt load. Sprint will then lease back its own towers, expected to be around 3,300 total, from Towerco.
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Six of UK's largest ISPs announce sign up to government-backed initiative to clamp down on music piracy pcadvisor.co.uk
Broadband TVs: Are We There Yet? businessweek.com
WiMAX WISPs target the enterprise networkworld.com
Cisco Buys Pure for a Smarter Home Network gigaom.com
Canadian Carriers May Switch To GSM Yahoo News
Nokia, Qualcomm End Patent Disputes informationweek
Rogers Looks For New Ways To Annoy Customers, Hijacks Failed DNS Lookups techdirt.com
Iphone vulnerable to hack attacks theinquirer.net

Asia, Europe Still Dominate FTTH lightreading.com
On a Clearwire, you can see everything ft.com
Femto Forum crowns TR-069 protocol as new management standard telecommagazine.com
Verizon offers to divest assets for Alltel deal Yahoo News
Seattle Spam King faces 47-month sentence theregister.co.uk
Snooping requests go through the roof theinquirer.net
Tiscali sues BT for 'defamation and falsehood' theregister.co.uk
3-D Video: Coming to Home Theaters? multichannel.com
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65,000 East Coast Verizon employees, 15,000 of whom live and work in the New York City area, have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if Verizon and labor unions can't reach an agreement by the August 2 expiration of their current deal. According to Crain's New York, 91% of workers voted to authorize a strike if negotiations fail. "That s pretty much standard procedure," says a Verizon spokesman. "It really doesn t mean anything about the tenor of the negotiations." Workers say the newly announced NYC FiOS plan gives them added leverage, as the company doesn't want install schedules disrupted.
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Explosive growth at Comcast has the nation's second largest broadband provider perpetually struggling to provide quality customer support. In fact, customer satisfaction with Comcast just reached record lows, according to the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. Comcast says they've hired some 15,000 new support workers in the last 18 months to handle the strain, but the Washington Post today highlights the continued problems:

For years, ISPs have been either outsourcing their newsgroup access or eliminating it as a perk altogether. That shift only accelerated with NY AG Andrew Cuomo's recent child porn "crackdown," which ISPs admit doesn't have them doing anything differently, but has given them a nice scapegoat for newsgroup elimination. AOL stopped offering newsgroup access three years ago, Time Warner Cable just announced they'd be scrapping access, and AT&T is pulling access to the entire alt.binary hierarchy.

In an effort to pick up the fleeing "refugees," newsgroup operators have been running promotions on newsgroup access. Newsgroup Direct is offering Time Warner Cable, Sprint and Verizon customers 20% off their usual rates. NGroups is offering a $30 per quarter "Roadrunner special" until July 31. Of course, there's a fairly vast difference in pricing, features, retention and quality of service.

Users in our Time Warner Cable forum are engaged in an interesting conversation on the best and least expensive newsgroup services out there. There's also a significant number of newsgroup review breakdowns out there.

Does your ISP still offer complementary newsgroup service? If not, do you have any recommendations for our users?
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Verizon today announced that the telco will be offering two new home gateways for FiOS customers starting in the third quarter of this year. According to the telco, the new broadband routers, built to custom Verizon specifications by Actiontec and Westell, will boost in-home networking speeds over coaxial from 75 Mbps to 175Mbps (using the MOCA 1.1 standard).

Verizon uses MOCA for in-home networking because it's cheaper than running Cat-5 through subscriber homes. The support of this latest MOCA 1.1 standard not only boosts the maximum throughput of the technology to 175Mbps, but it increases the maximum number of devices that can be supported in the household from seven to fifteen.

The devices will allow the creation of multiple (up to four) simultaneous Wi-Fi networks, feature hardware-based QoS, remote Verizon technician management, 64-bit dual core processors and enhanced in-home media sharing functionality. The respective press releases from Actiontec and Westell have slightly more detail. The new gear drops in August.
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A new study (pdf) from a telecom consulting firm named Costquest finds that while thirty-nine U.S. States have something vaguely resembling a broadband plan, only ten of the nation's fifty states have undertaken a definitive broadband mapping effort. Keep in mind that several of those states have embraced the "Connected Nation model," whose real benefits remain dubious. Even fewer states have actually reached the point where they've started getting service into unserved areas, according to the report:

Judging from the way they've sent their paid attack dogs after Google, the baby bells don't like the search giant very much. They despise Google's positions on network neutrality, don't like their push into white space spectrum broadband, and generally think Google owes them for building a business model on the back of their networks. The dislike is mutual. Vint Cerf, co-creator of the TCP/IP protocol and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, says in a video interview he has "very little warm feeling about those guys," and says the telcos generally act like children having tantrums. "I'm not going to build this system unless you give me three scoops of ice cream and a pony," jokes Cerf. "My reaction to this is quite negative. It's harmful to the national interest to behave in this way."
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