Technology Futures

I have Adelphia cable modem service at home, and had to call customer service the other day when the system was out for nearly a day. The service technician said something very revealing. The person could not determine why the service was out, and said they would have to roll a truck to make a service call. She informed me it would take a week and a half to do so. I asked if they thought it was acceptable to have a customer be without Internet access for ten days or more, and added that I sometimes work from home. Here is what she said:

We are only providing an entertainment service.

This statement is stunning. "Only an entertainment service" indicates that Adelphia, which is now owned, in different parts, by Comcast, TimeWarner, and Cox, really has no clue about how important the Internet is to their customers.

It also means they will never be successful selling Voice over IP services over their cable networks, because no one wants to risk being without phone service for ten days, which is apparently okay with Adelphia/Cox/Comcast/TimeWarner.

This is not isolated to bankrupt Adelphia. A buddy of mine just quit his job as a network manager at Cox because of relentless cutbacks in customer service that made his job unbearable. The cable companies each have massive debt loads. They can't raise rates on broadband service because the phone companies have decided to fight via a price war. So the only way they can make any headway on debt is to cut customer service. Two years ago, Adelphia's Internet service was as flaky as it is today, but customer service was terrific; they could roll a truck the next day in most cases. And the phone tech support was much more responsive then that it is now.

For the first time, I am thinking seriously of switching to Verizon DSL, even though Verizon has awful customer service. But they understand (at least better than the phone companies, I think) that broadband is not just an "entertainment" service. I sure hope so. If they both think that, it is even more urgent that communities make investments that ensure an independent local broadband infrastructure.

Oh, and my service problem? It turned out the culprit, which I diagnosed myself, was the inline power surge supressor I installed just before the cable modem. If lightning strikes nearby and a power spike jumps onto the copper cable out in the yard, it will come straight into the house and can jump right through the cable modem to my computer and fry the thing. I have had the surge suppressor attached for a long time, but all of a sudden, the cable modem could not get a signal. The suppressor introduces a very small amount of signal attenuation, but the sudden and inexplicable failure highlights just what a fragile and antiquated system the Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) cable modem system is. My Internet is working at home, but without any lightning protection. I don't like that one bit.

The system should not be that sensitive to small amounts of attentuation in the first place, and in the second place, I should not be forced to use a copper-based system that lacks that kind of power surge protection. But hey! It's just an "entertainment" system! Why should the cable company care if a customer's televisions and computer are fried in a thunderstorm? It's just "entertainment."

And fiber? It's immune to lightning and power surges, making it really excellent for residential use.

SlashDot has a long discussion thread about an opinion issued by the Federal Election Commission that "bloggers are journalists." The ruling exempts bloggers from having to file lenghty reports and paperwork to meet the McCain-Feingold campaign laws. As Slashdot points out, the ruling indicates that bias in reporting does not automatically mean a blogger is NOT a journalist.

If this seems like hairsplitting or stating the obvious, it is nonetheless important because those that argued bloggers should be regulated based their argument in part on the notion that they were biased towards one position or another. What the FEC is saying is that the mere fact of having an opinion that leans politically left or politically right does not mean you immediately fall under campaign finance laws.

The FEC seems to be trying to do the right thing. What is disturbing is that the issue came up at all. Trying to regulate the right of individuals to express an opinion on the Internet is just wrong, and dreadfully so.

Scientists have discovered that a butterfly in Africa with electroluminescent wings uses a microstructure to enhance the light emitting properties of the wings that is virtually identical to a design developed in 2001 to improve the efficiency of LEDs.

Nature is pretty amazing.

The music industry has been complaining bitterly that online music has been cutting into the sale of CDs (legal and illegal downloads). But new data shows that online (legal) music sales have been flat for some months. This suggests what many people, including me, have been saying for some time--that the music industry has been serving up crummy music.

There is another explanation as well. Consumers are not stupid, and most people can figure out pretty quickly that it is better to pay an extra buck or two for the CD, which enables them to avoid all the protection schemes that come with legal digital downloads, which range from somewhat annoying to just plain awkward.

But CD sales are also down, which further suggests consumers think the music offerings are not that good. In the elusive quest to sell only gold and platinum groups, many good bands and musicians are being bypassed, and the irony is that with digital distribution, there is hardly any reason not to sign up lots of bands and see which ones become popular--distribution costs are virtually zero!

Meanwhile, there are lots of groups that seem to do reasonably well without any recording contracts at all, simply using live concerts and a Web site to promote their music.