Having Won the Competition for New Speed, Kansas City Slow Things Down: [25th Jan 2012]

It has emerged that Google has run run into problems as it tries to install its 1GB fiber network in Kansas City. According to sources there has been some debate over the position of lines and the pole fiber connection rates. While these red tape issues are often faced by ISPs, it was thought that Google would be able to bypass much of this due to Kansas City having won the bid for the network. It is now being suggested that Google may need to buy SureWest to facilitate the development of their network. However Google are saying that a deal with the Kansas City utilities should take a matter of weeks to sort out and that the pole attachment fees will be paid. It has been pointed out that other cities are lining up to take the place of Kansas City if the deal falls through.


The mayor of Boston has urged Comcast to stop the price rises which are affecting local citizens. The city faces a lack of cable competition and therefore Comcast have been free to increase prices as they see fit. In fact prices in the city have risen by 80% in the last three years since price capping agreements expired. Mayor Thomas Menino has filed a petition with the FCC asking them to regulate the cost of cable in the area. The mayor says he would like the tools to protect his citizens from increases in prices.


Verizon Communications has announced its fourth quarter results this week which show that the company has lost more than $2 billion due to changes to its pension plan. Despite this there was a 7% increase in revenue compared to the same quarter one year ago. Meanwhile Verizon Wireless has reported an increase in earnings of 13%, buoyed by a 19% increase in data revenue. The results also showed that 44% of Verizon customers now use a smartphone, which is up from 39% during the third quarter of last year. 7.7 million smartphones were sold in total. However many of these sales were for the iPhone which has to be heavily subsidized by the company which has reduced the margins earned. The report also states that it is expected that the LTE 4G smartphones will be the strongest sellers of 2012 following the further roll-out of the LTE network.


Comcast has been criticized this week after watchers of the NFC Championship Game were dismayed to see extra Comcast ads aired. On at least four occasions ads were aired which prevented some watchers from seeing live gameplay. Comcast have said that the problems were restricted to the DC area and were related to problems with the FOX network. Fox have apologized and said that they have taken steps to prevent this happening again.


The government has announced that the Broadband Map can now be accessed from mobile devices. The map was launched last year and was designed to allow users to get information on the coverage of broadband across the country and the expected speeds. However it was the subject of much criticism when it was found that it failed to give information on price and often gave inaccurate information regarding ISP coverage. In addition, despite guarantees that the map would be constantly updated, it was only updated once in the past year and is still inaccurate according to users. The mobile version allows users to swipe panels to access information and to use GPS to find local information.