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Con Edison charges up 'electric Ethernet' - New York businesses can now get Ethernet services through the city's electrical conduits, as Con Edison is moving into the tough business of providing the services in metro areas.
The move is part of a bigger strategy by the energy company to diversify its networks used for high-speed Internet access in New York. The company began offering the service Wednesday through its telecom subsidiary, Con Edison Communications ( CEC). The service, dubbed PowerLan Ethernet, will provide a high-bandwidth, low-cost alternative to current networks. It will also give New York a backup network by providing the only alternative to Verizon Communications' conduits.
Go to article by Tiffany Kary at ZDNet

America's Most Wired Cities 2002
Yes, San Francisco wins. But hats off to Boston, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and San Diego for their impressive Top 10 debuts While the Net-friendly trio of San Francisco, San Jose, and Austin tops our Most Wired Cities list once again this year, it's the interesting up-and-comers that have caught our eye this time around. The most notable among them is Boston, which rose eight big notches through the top ranks to reach No. 4. Three other former underachievers, Salt Lake City, San Diego, and Los Angeles, also made great leaps forward this year. How did they do it? Salt Lake is the easiest to understand: As this year's Winter Olympics city, it has generated plenty of Net activity, and its city-specific content has ballooned. San Diego's economy has abruptly rushed online, with an increase of more than 50 percent in the number of business domains. At the same time, Los Angeles residents are switching to broadband at a faster clip than most of the rest of the country. And Boston? Its scores have risen across the board, but nowhere more so than in Net use and depth of content. -- Article by Guy Michael Currier at Yahoo Internet Life is no longer available.

Cable companies move to tiered pricing
After noticing that their online games of "EverQuest" were getting slower and slower, Jim Williamson and his 13-year-old daughter ran a speed check of his Time Warner Road Runner cable service. It was running at about half the speed they were used to, he says. Within a week, Time Warner e-mailed him an offer to "Increase your Road Runner speed!!!" by signing up for a more costly business-class service. "They never guaranteed us a set speed, so no one could complain about the loss," Williamson, of Pinellas County, Fla., wrote in an e-mail. But Time Warner will probably lose his business, since he's now looking into getting DSL (digital subscriber line) service. "I won't be pushed into this new scheme," he said. Williamson and hundreds of other customers have been complaining about the slower speeds and poorer service of high-speed Internet access since being transitioned from the now defunct Excite@Home service to the cable companies' networks. Before its collapse last fall, Excite@Home had 4.1 million customers and controlled about 45 percent of the U.S. home-broadband market.
Go to article by Tiffany Kary at C|Net

A monster of a scam
Would you spend $130 for a lifetime of high-speed Internet access? A couple hundred Netizens did--or at least they thought they did. They signed up with DSL Monster, a California-based broadband-access reseller. The deal: for anywhere from $130 to $230, plus the cost of a modem, the company promised to deliver high-speed Net access for the rest of your days. All you had to do was put up with a little spam from the company's advertising clients. Well, you can guess what happened. Nobody ever got online. Corey Dyer, the guy who started the company, disappeared in February. And a posse of angry customers, coworkers, and cops are looking for him. -- Article by Daniel Tynan AT C|Net is no longer available.

CableLabs Issues Home-Networking Specs
Cable Television Laboratories Inc. is adding a link for new cable services with the first set of specifications governing home networking. The Louisville, Colo.-based cable consortium announced Wednesday the specifications for CableHome 1.0, which will give cable operators the management tools to create home-networking services and give electronics manufacturers the guidelines to build the necessary devices. CableLabs plans to start CableHome 1.0 product-certification testing sometime in the third quarter. Cable operators, including AT&T Broadband and Cox Communications Inc., have begun offering home-networking options to customers as a way to gain more revenue from their existing cable-modem networks. -- Article by Karen Brown at MultichannelNews is no longer available.

SBC, Yahoo! Marriage Gets Serious
Deciding they like the sound of their names combined, and the attendant revenues such a bond would create, SBC Communications and Yahoo! executives strengthened ties to each other with a contract expansion that runs into business broadband services. According to SBC officials, small business customers make up 25 percent of its total Internet subscribers. With almost 60 million lines in service throughout its 13-state network, the telephone company would obviously love to increase that percentage, given the higher prices charged for business-grade services.
Go to article by Jim Wagner at InternetNews

Judge Upholds Cox Suit
A Virginia judge sustained a potential class-action lawsuit on behalf of Cox Communications Inc. subscribers, who challenged the MSO for charging more for cable-modem service in the East than it does out West. -- Article at MultiChannelNews is no longer available.

FCC Takes Major Step Toward Deregulating Broadband
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a rule change this morning reclassifying broadband via cable modem as an "information service," freeing the cable industry from regulations that typically are applied to "telecommunications services," including making access to their lines available to competing Internet service providers. The rule change is the first of several championed by FCC Chairman Michael Powell as a fast track to greater broadband deployment. In February, the Commission issued for comment a proposed rule that would reclassify telephone-based broadband Internet access services that critics contend will essentially establish DSL service as a monopoly of the Baby Bells. Thursday's reclassification will allow the cable companies, the nation's largest suppliers of broadband service, to avoid previous regulatory obligations, including nondiscriminatory interconnection and carriage, fair contribution to the support of universal service and availability of advanced telecommunications to individuals with disabilities.
Go to article by Roy Mark at InternetNews

FCC: No Forced ISP Access on Cable
Cable operators are not required to carry unaffiliated Internet-service providers, the Federal Communications Commission ruled Thursday in a decision consistent with the agency's deregulatory bent. After studying cable's Internet offerings for 18 months, the agency declared that cable-modem service is an interstate information service not subject to forced-access mandates that apply to phone companies' Internet-access services. The FCC also concluded that cable-modem service is neither a cable service nor a telecommunications service. -- Article by Ted Hearn at MultiChannelNews is no longer available.

Advent Makes Broadband Broader - Forbes

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