Feds Start Wait List For DTV Converter Coupons - Program has reached its $1.34 billion funding cap…

Back in 2007, the government announced it would be giving each household in the United States two coupons to help pay for digital adapters, made necessary by the February 17, 2009 transition from analog to digital television. But with the program now running out of cash, the government has announced they’ll be putting those who need the coupons on a waiting list. According to the Associated Press, the waiting list was created by the NTIA on Sunday after the program hit a $1.34 billion funding limit set by Congress. Nielsen estimates that as of December, 6.8 percent of the 114 million U.S. households with televisions remained completely unready for the digital transition.
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Tags: free phone, voice over internet, gsm, call, voip-phones

Monday Evening Links -

US Appeals Court Wary Of Co’s Suit Vs FCC Over Free Internet Nasdaq.com
VzW Asked to Pull Push-to-Talk Ad xchangemag.com
Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse lead latest Consumer Reports survey consumeraffairs.com
Clearwire Simplifies Mobile Broadband Usability xchangemag.com
Atlantic Metro Communications, Rainbow Broadband partner in NYC lighwave.com
Half of all Brits think their Broadband is too Expensive ispreview.co.uk
NTT Talks IPv6 TV at CES lightreading.com
Year of opportunity for O2 and Sky? samknows.com
Microsoft made $1.5 billion from Vista incapable PCs theinquirer.net
FiOS Offers HD Six-Month Freebies multichannel.com
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Tags: voip-phones, gsm, internet telephony, h232, call

New Comcast Throttling System 100% Online - Comcast tells us new network management system live in all markets

In line with their traffic management website Comcast has confirmed to us they’ve installed their new broadband throttling system across all markets. The system, which we first profiled back in September, throttles a user’s connection if a particular CMTS port is congested, and if that user has been identified as a primary reason why. This two-condition throttling system replaces Comcast’s old, FCC-criticized system of using forged TCP packets to throttle upstream P2P services for all users, regardless of consumption.

According to Comcast’s filings (pdf) with the FCC, they’ve deployed new hardware and software close to the company’s Regional Network Routers (RNRs). This hardware will flip a user from the standard “Priority Best-Effort” traffic (PBE) to lower quality of service (QoS) “Best-Effort” traffic (BE) for fifteen minutes if they’re a major reason congestion exists.

While certainly a slightly more transparent system to those paying attention, the new system is probably going to confuse the American public, many of whom don’t even know what a gigabyte is. Comcast used a bus metaphor to explain the difference between best effort and priority best effort traffic to the FCC:

Comcast says that sustained use of 70% of your up or downstream throughput triggers the BE state, at which point you’ll find your traffic priority lowered until your usage drops to 50% of your provisioned upstream or downstream bandwidth for “a period of approximately 15 minutes.” A throttled Comcast user being placed in a BE state “may or may not result in the user’s traffic being delayed or, in extreme cases, dropped before PBE traffic is dropped.”

Note that upstream and downstream bandwidth are managed separately. Also note that the differentiation between PBE and BE traffic occurs in two millisecond increments. According to Comcast, even if the packets for a best effort throttled user missed 50 “busses,” the delay would only be about one-tenth of a second.

In addition to the new throttling system, Comcast has also a 250GB monthly usage cap for all users. As we mentioned last Friday, Comcast has confirmed that a web portal-based bandwidth tracker is currently in beta among Comcast employees — but has yet to give an official launch date. A Comcast insider had previously given us leaked screenshots of the monitor, and said it was originally scheduled to go live on January 5 (today).

Comcast has confirmed to us that they’ve completed the upgrade to the new system.
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Tags: skype, h232, voip, gsm, free phone

RIAA Fires Media Sentry - As industry develops new ISP ‘three strikes’ plan…

The RIAA recently announced they’d hashed out closed door deals with a number of ISPs to terminate the connections of customers who receive too many warning letters from the industry. Their existing system of DMCA letter generation relies on data collected by largely unaccountable and secretive organizations like BayTSP and Media Sentry. Picking up on an earlier P2PNet report by Jon Newton, the Wall Street Journal reports the RIAA has fired the controversial Media Sentry, instead hiring DtecNet out of Copenhagen to monitor your BitTorrent bad habits.
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Tags: voice over internet, free phone, voip-phones, skype, h232

ISPs Won’t Admit Participation In New RIAA Plan - Only Verizon has clearly stated they’re not playing along…

The RIAA recently announced that they’d struck closed door deals with several ISPs to boot repeat P2P pirates off of their networks. The only ISP we’re sure has signed on to this so far is Cox — and despite what they tell their subscribers, the DMCA does not require ISPs to participate in this project. If anything, the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions protect ISPs from having to participate in a system that’s going to be costly and potentially unreliable.

We are not working with them on this -Verizon, on the RIAA’s new three strikes plan

While the RIAA says they’ve struck deals with a number of “leading” carriers, apparently those carriers don’t want their cooperation publicized. Wired news has tried to track down which ISPs are participating in this plan. Only Verizon offers official comment, saying definitively that “we are not working with them on this.” You might recall that Verizon has won previous run-ins with the RIAA over disclosing P2P user identities. Their FiOS infrastructure capacity also doesn’t require that they use piracy as an excuse to boot P2P users (yet).

AT&T, Comcast, and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association all offer no comment. So why are the deals not only being hashed out in private — but nobody wants to admit they’re participating? If stopping piracy is the right thing to do, why aren’t ISPs proudly crowing about their involvement at every opportunity?

Potentially because piracy has been broadband’s unspoken killer app for the better part of the decade, and ISPs want to eat their cake and have it too. Carriers don’t want the negative PR kick and potential customer defections associated with clearly announcing that they’re fighting piracy, but they want to quietly tackle congestion while staying on the RIAA’s good side — so they’re playing along quietly.

Or perhaps, as Techdirt reasons, the involvement of NY’s Attorney General has some ISPs thinking it’s mandatory. Andrew Cuomo most recently informed ISPs they’d be sued if they didn’t participate in his crackdown against child porn — a plan that in reality didn’t actually accomplish anything.
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Tags: free phone, voice over internet, voip, voip-phones, internet telephony

Netflix Via LG HDTVs - Video streaming service embedded directly…

Netflix has been making waves in the broadband video space by integrating their service into everything, from the Roku set top and the Xbox 360, to TiVO units and DVD players. Now Netflix says they’ll be integrating the service into HDTVs from LG Electronics. This is the first time the Netflix service will be embedded directly into a television. Tim Alessi, director of product development for LG Electronics USA, says the Netflix-enhanced TVs will sell for roughly $200 to $300 more than a regular HDTV set.
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Tags: free phone, voice over internet, voip-phones, call, msn messenger

iPhone Tethering Arriving This Week? - Use your iPhone as a very expensive modem…

Rumors of AT&T finally allowing the iPhone to be tethered and used as an HSDPA modem have been bubbling for a while, and now it appears the rumor is at full boil. The Unofficial Apple Weblog is reporting that the functionality may be announced at this week’s MacWorld event. Earlier rumors suggested that tethering would cost customers $30 a month on top of your existing voice and data plan, in addition to the 5GB per month consumption cap and overage charges.
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Tags: internet telephony, voip, h232, skype, voice over internet

Spotify Aims To Compete With Piracy - New streaming P2P audio service

User uid://1118311 submits this Torrent Freak report, which profiles a new startup named Spotify, a product from the developer of uTorrent. According to TorrentFreak, Spotify was created by some of the money made when uTorrent was sold to BitTorrent — the idea being to create a competitor to piracy. The service streams 160kbps quality MP3s immediately from a huge catalog of major label music, in part using P2P technology. From creator Andres Sehr:

The service doesn’t work with iPods or other media players, which doesn’t strike us as much of a piracy alternative, though the social music-sharing aspects of the service look promising. Since it was in closed beta in the U.S., some users note you may be able to successfully sign up if using a UK proxy server.
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Tags: internet telephony, call, h232, msn messenger, voice over internet

AT&T, Verizon Stocks Tumble - Craig Moffett thinks Wall Street’s overconfident in telcos

Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, who has recently shown he’s no fan of network upgrades in general and Verizon FiOS specifically, single-handedly sent AT&T and Verizon stocks tumbling today by proclaiming that Wall Street was overestimating the ability of AT&T and Verizon to weather a steep recession. “AT&T and Verizon may indeed be somewhat more recession-resistant than most businesses,” Moffett wrote in a sixty page note to clients. “But we believe they are nevertheless much more cyclically exposed than consensus estimates (and valuations) would suggest.”
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WiMax Edges Closer to Chicago - Though launch goes from ‘on deck’ to ‘late 2009′

The Chicago Tribune is eagerly awaiting the arrival of Sprint and Clearwire’s Mobile WiMax offering, citing a mid-to-late 2009 launch date for “Clear” in the windy city. That’s a shift from repeated reports that both Chicago and Washington DC would go live shortly after the launch of XOHM in Baltimore. “Clear” and “XOHM” will ultimately become one product as part of Sprint and Clearwire’s joint venture, which aims to reach 140 million people within thirty months. The completion of the network will be greatly aided by a $3.2 billion cash infusion from Comcast ($1.05 billion), Intel ($1 billion), Time Warner Cable ($550 million), Google ($500 million), and Bright House Networks ($100 million.)
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