The other benefit of Prime is, of course, free two-day shipping on anything bought from Amazon (or some third-party sellers who participate in the program), plus $3.99-per-item one-day shipping. Which of course feeds into people’s desire to purchase from Amazon to the point that ShopRunner, a federated competitor to Amazon Prime, is giving away free service to prior trial customers (like me) to encourage use of the federation’s retailers.

Speaking of shipping, Amazon has started pushing “frustration-free packaging,” which acknowledges that you don’t need shiny retail boxes with anti-theft mechanisms built in if you’re selling products online. The result: smaller boxes that are easier to open and cheaper to make and to ship…and they’re more recyclable.

You could write a case study about innovations Amazon has brought to the markets they’ve decided to break into. Granted, they’ve made life harder for their competitors and I’m sure some of their vendors (book publishers in particular) however customers are receiving the benefit of their actions; quarterly net margins were on the order of three-quarters of a percent, on a company that does things quite efficiently as far as I can tell.

I would go into more detail about the interesting/wonderful actions Amazon has taken 9and opened the floor to people who don’t like the company) however that’s a post for another day and time. Class is in less than eight hours, and I don’t want to get mono…

Depending on where you are, certain wireless providers will have better coverage than others. Nationwide, Verizon has the best network from what I’ve seen, though you pay for that privilege. AT&T is second by virtue of pure land area, and they now have LTE in a smattering of markets, but in areas where Verizon also is, Verizon tends to be better. The same comparison happens when in T-Mobile HSPA+ (“4G”) enabled areas; T-Mobile wins versus AT&T there too. Sprint falls behind everyone at times due to a botched 4G network deployment (they’re now switching gears from WiMAX to LTE) however they have a decent network in many areas where T-Mobile is either roaming or 2G-only (which is why I still have Sprint).

So, with all that in mind, pick the cellular provider that gives you the coverage you need in your area. Though the best deals tend to be on Sprint or T-Mobile.

Specifically, Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile and CricKet PAYgo all use Sprint as their underlying network. Any Android phone running on Tracfone’s Straight Talk or Net10 brands is also Sprint-only. Simple Mobile runs on T-Mobile.

But what’s so good about the carriers that I mentioned above?

On Straight Talk you can get an Android phone for $150-$200 (depending on whether you want an LG phone with a keyboard or a lower-end Samsung without one) and an unlimited-everything plan for $45. On Net10 the $150 Android is made by LG, the LG phone with the hardware keyboard is $180 and the unlimited-everything plan is $50 per month. If you want AT&T service instead, Straight Talk’s highest-end phone runs Symbian, for a slightly higher price than the Android, but with an identical monthly charge. If you want Verizon, you’ll have to settle for a non-smartphone.

For CricKet, unlimited talk and text for a non-smartphone is $35 within their home network area (see my previous post for more information on this). For a smartphone, the cost jumps to $55 per month, but phones are a little cheaper for what you get compared to Straight Talk. Outside CricKet’s own coverage area, prices are similar but you get 1000 minutes and 500MB of data instead of unlimited minutes and 1GB (after which data speeds slow). The outside-area non-smartphone plans are rather attractive as well; $25 gets unlimited data plus 300 minutes. $35 ups the minute count to 1000.

For Boost Mobile (again on Sprint) $50 per month gets you unlimited everything on a non-smartphone. Smartphones are $5 more per month for the same thing. The cool feature here is that, every six months, your monthly fee decreases by $5 until you’re at $35 or $40 per month, depending on whether you have a smartphone or not. Boost Mobile also has the Samsung Transform Ultra, which is a little better than other smartphones that run on non-contract Sprint-based providers.

Virgin Mobile shares Boost’s unlimited plan pricing, albeit without a discount for non-smartphone users or long-term customers. That said, they have less expensive plans if you’re willing to stay within a specific minute count (300 for $35 per month, 1200 for $45). They also have, for non-smartphones, a $30 plan that gives 1500 minutes and 1500 text messages per month, plus 30MB of data (a fair amount for a non-smartphone). Virgin Mobile is a little less expensive than comparable carriers for similar phones; Android phones start at $100 and include higher-end models such as the LG slider found on Straight Talk, the HTC Wildfire S and a large-screened Motorola-branded phone with dual cameras.

On the T-Mobile front, Simple Mobile doesn’t sell phones; you’ll have to buy your own T-Mobile compatible handset for a sm that could be fair or fairly princely depending on what you choose. However their plan structure is simple: $40 buys unlimited talk and text with 3G-speed data; another $20 per month upgrades that data speed to 4G. The catch: service is only available where T-Mobile works (which isn’t everywhere), and you’ll need to pick up a specific-to-prepaid T-Mobile phone to get a handset at a rate anywhere near reasonable (a very basic Android phone is available for $75, a refurbished mid-level handset is $120 and a higher-end phone is $350).

But what if you just want to talk and text on a phone that doesn’t include Android? That’s actually a lot easier; Straight Talk and Page Plus Cellular both offer Verizon-based unlimited-talk-and-text plans for $45 per month. Straight Talk also gives the option of buying an AT&T-based phone with coverage that mirrors AT&T’s contract network (Verizon and Sprint resellers either won’t let you off their respective networks or charge you for roaming), and either picking up a 1000-minute, 1000-text, 30-MB-of-web plan for $30 or an unlimited-everything plan for $45. Net10 offers 750 minutes-plus-texts for $25 per month.

If you don’t even need that many minutes, two good choices would be Tracfone, Page Plus Cellular and PlatinumTel. PlatinumTel runs on Sprint but has the distinction of offering a rate plan that charges 5¢ per minute, 2¢ per text and 10¢ per MB of web access, with a minimum monthly spend of just over $3. Page Plus (on Verizon) offers minutes at between 5¢ and 10¢ apiece depending on how many you buy at once, and costs at minimum $2.50 per month. Text messaging is 5¢ per message on this plan, or you can buy a pack of 2000 for a month for around $11, or unlimited for $20.

Tracfone’s per-minute rates vary, depending on what size of airtime card you get, and which phone you add it to. The company, which has traditionally used promotional codes to give savvy shoppers more minutes per dollar, has now started offering “triple minutes for life” on some of their phones, including one that costs $50 and runs on AT&T’s contract-class network footprint, including roaming (as long as you stay on 2G, AT&T does just fine). This means that Tracfone’s $10 airtime card costs around 11 cents per minute, or 3.3 cents per text (text messages cost 0.3 minutes of airtime), and their heavy-hitting $200 one-year airtime card doles out 4500 minutes (at a little over 4.4 cents apiece, or 1.3 cents per text) instead of just 1500 (or 3000 with double minutes). $200 may sound like a lot of money to spend on cell phone service, but minutes last a year, so you’re winding up spending less than $17 per month on a minute bucket where you can average 375 minutes per month, which isn’t bad at all.

As stated before, the best cellular option for your needs is going to vary depending on what you want your phone to do. I pay a little over $60 per month for a plan that effectively includes unlimited everything including phone insurance on Sprint (I’m on a special plan with special add-ons that isn’t offered anymore). My mom and brother each pay $25 per month on Virgin Mobile (for the plan that is now $35 per month). My dad and other brother have Tracfones, with my dad spending maybe $20 per month on service, and my little brother spending $7.50 per month or so. When you add all the fees up, we’re ahead of where a family plan for equivalent functionality would put us, and only one of us (me) is on a contract. All very good things…

Wrong.

The above misconception is surprisingly common, so I don’t blame anyone for espousing it, however CricKet actually runs their own cellular network in many areas of the United States. They own 1900MHz spectrum in some areas (compatible with the iPhone), 1700MHz (AKA AWS, which is the band where T-Mobile has its better-than-2G network) in others (not compatible with the iPhone).

Beyond those areas, they contract with Sprint (and possibly other carriers) for cellular service. Some carriers (like Sprint) allow all phone functions to be used, including 3G data, without roaming charges. Others, not so much. You might be able to call and text without additional charges, depending on the plan you choose…but that’s about it. CricKet will sell service in areas not covered by their own network (their phones use Sprint as the primary carrier there), however those areas don’t have the unlimited-minute plans that are the hallmark of CricKet-owned-and-operated territories.

MetroPCS is in a similar situation, as a regional unlimited carrier similar to CricKet (except serving different areas with a network that in many locations has skipped from 2G to 4G LTE). They have their own network in some areas (like Dallas, Las Vegas and much of Florida) however if you venture beyond those areas you’re roaming on someone else. Unlike CricKet however, they only sell their service in their home coverage area. On the plus side, MetroPCS has LTE (AKA 4G) overlaid in many of their markets, though due to limited spectrum availability the service isn’t much better than what you’d see from a 3G phone on other carriers.

Now, if you’re looking for a Verizon-based cellular carrier, you can get one, provided you’re willing to keep your data usage way down. The carrier in question is Page Plus Cellular; $30 per month buys 1200 minutes, 3000 text messages and 100MB of data, $45 buys unlimited minutes and texts plus 20MB of data, and $55 ups the 20MB to 300MB. You’ll have to buy your own phone (from somewhere, which could include Page Plus’s website or dealer network) but there’s no contract, and $55 per month wouldn’t even cover the bare minimum single-line smartphone package on Verizon proper. Speaking of Verizon proper, roaming off their network on Page Plus costs 29¢ per minute, but roaming off of Verizon doesn’t happen much these days anyway.

One more thing: you can put an iPhone on CricKet, though it will only work on their network where they’re using PCS (1900MHz) spectrum. In areas where they’re AWS-only, the phone will roam on Sprint if they’re available. I won’t go into how to get the iPhone running on a carrier other than its own (other than noting that only the Verizon or Sprint iPhone 4 can be used on CricKet); that’s what Google is for.

Here’s how to get where I am (assuming you have a Windows 7 computer with Bluetooth…and assuming you own a $69 Magic Trackpad)

1. Pair your trackpad (no code needed) with your computer via Bluetooth. You’ll only get basic pointing functions when you do this but that’s the first step that I did.
2. Download this and open/install it. It’s Apple’s Magic Trackpad driver, extracted from one of their more recent Boot Camp updates.
3. Let Windows re-recognize your trackpad. You’ll lose the ability to point and click for several seconds, but when that ability comes back tap-to-click, two-finger-tap-to-right-click, two-finger scrolling, bottom-left-corner right-click and other features will be enabled on your aluminum-and-glass pointing masterpiece.

One big caveat: there is no way to enable/disable any of the above features (mentioned in step 3). They’re all turned on, and combined with the fact that you’re using a touchpad on what I presume is a desktop computer, you may be in for a jumpy, potentially maddening experience. I am unsure of whether Apple’s Boot Camp Windows application will install on a non-Apple piece of kit, but that’s where the settings for this device are. So if you want to turn off tap-to-click, try installing that (download Apple’s latest Boot Camp update and extract with 7-zip, then extract various files again until you find what you’re looking for).

I hope the above post inspires and enlightens others to follow where I have trod, albeit a bit more easily since a 1.77MB file is smaller than a 280MB one. Comment back if you’re able to piece together the settings part of this puzzle, or if you’ve experienced success in your endeavor at the above.

First off, I’ll state my conditions: 3-4 bars of HSPA+ signal, from a tower which got its backhaul upgraded a few weeks ago from 1.5M down and 600K to 5-8x that. My primary testing location is in Golden, CO, right next to Colorado School of Mines. T-Mobile’s service may be better or worse depending on your location, so take that into account when deciding whether to get T-Mobile service for your own use. Other standard disclaimers apply.

For what it’s worth, the folks at the T-Mobile store swapped my old SIM (a few months old) for a new, identical-looking one when I bought the Rocket. Something about SIM swaps solving issues that other people had when coming into the store with their smartphones. Also for what it’s worth, I’m running my tests from T-Mobile’s first no-overages plan: 5GB of data at top speed for $40 per month, throttled speeds thereafter.

I’ll be uploading pics of the Rocket, including what’s in the box and size comparisons with the older Rocket, shortly. But for now I’m laying off any uploads, since roommates are playing Call of Duty on my primary connection, a 20Mbit down, 2Mbit up Comcast residential connection.

Speaking of Call of Duty (specifically Black Ops on a PlayStation 3 slim), said roommate humored me when I asked him to switch from using my Comcast to my T-Mobile connection, routed from the Rocket 3.0 to Ethernet by my last-generation MacBook Pro (2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, nVidia 9400M GPU) running Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). He said that the connection was in the middle of the pack; he could tell that there was more latency than on the hard line, however the game was still very playable (knife kills included), a shining endorsement given the fact that Call of Duty is a first person shooter, and given the fact that I wasn’t using a dedicated mobile router to connect him to the web.

As far as raw latency goes, 1000 pings to mddhosting.com (the host of this site, based out of Denver in a well-connected data center) yielded the following details:

Minimum: 20.158 ms
Mean: 35.795 ms (many oings were in the 26-30ms range)
Max: 159.438 ms (only a couple of pings went this high)
Standard Deviation (Jitter): 14.855 ms (without outliers, this would’ve been a few ms lower)
Packet loss: 0% (that’s right, zero)

In comparison, the typical Qwest DSL connection around here runs between 24 and 46 ms to the same location, with a few milliseconds of jitter. Comcast bottoms out at around 10 ms, but averages 15-20 (jitter is 5-10 ms). Those are wireline connections. This is wireless service…based off of a cell tower. Pretty darned impressive, though in all fairness I started pinging shortly after 1:30 am…not exactly peak hours for traffic. Ping tests were done on my MacBook, which appears to perform better with the Rocket than either my IdeaPad U330 on Windows 7 or my friend’s nine-year-old ThinkPad T23 running Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal).

Next up, photos…

P.S. Comment with what paces you’d like me to put this device through. I don’t have enough data left on my plan to watch a full Netflix movie on it (in addition to other testing), but most everything short of that is doable.

1. Windstream’s biggest customers are AT&T and Verizon
Telcos buy backhaul from other telcos when it comes to providing cellular service. As long as Verizon and AT&T continue to rule the roost in the wireless biz, Windstream will continue to get a fair chunk of change per month for T1s and fiber Ethernet connections to cell sites in their footprint. In many cases other cellular providers also have to use Windstream for backhauling their cell sites, which generates even more revenue for Windstream, which isn’t particularly forgiving when it comes to T1 pricing either.

2. Rural wireline customers are going to be around forever
His words, not mine. The idea is that cellular service out in the sticks isn’t all that great to start with, and  if cell service is good then it’s riding over Windstream lines. Rural folks are also more reticent to give up landline service even if cellular service works just fine, and Windstream DSL  goes places that cable never will. Combine that with a USF kickback or two, plus low pricing on both DSL and landline service and you’ve got, in theory, a captive user base who will keep paying you $5o or $60 per month ad infinitum, as long as you keep that copper pair to their house in reasonable shape. Oh, and you’re getting some USF funding on each line because you’re rural; even Windstream’s “naked” DSL service still has a phone line involved, albeit one where outgoing calling of any kind costs 10¢ a minute.

Of course, the model breaks down if you’re serving areas that do have cable, where you just have to compete on price or lose customers unless the cableco is grossly incompetent. Or if the cellular providers use the cablecos for bandwidth and take wireless backhaul routes instead of Windstream wired ones, Windstream loses out. Or if some wireless ISP decides to offer service that beats Windstream’s standard 3 Mbps down, 635 kbps up (after ATM overhead), $40 DSL service, Windstream’s position gets a little less tenable.

Of course, Windstream does do fiber to the home for all of their new builds, and the tech supports either 12 or 24 Mbps down and 768k or 1.5M up. However even those speeds pale in comparison to what companies like Comcast have done with their DOCSIS 3 products. Then again, Windstream tends not to compete against Comcast.

3. Windstream could have bought Frontier, FairPoint , Embarq or even Qwest, but the price was too high
Windstream is no stranger to acquisitions; buying their way into being the ILEC in a given market  has been done several times recently, with Iowa Telecom being the biggest purchase. Windstream is also not averse to buying competitive carriers, as long as they can make a pretty penny on data revenues. To that end, they bought NuVox.

However the company has passed up deals like Verizon’s now-Frontier territories, the sinking carcass that is FairPoint and even such hulking giants as Embarq and Qwest, leaving the two last companies to CenturyTel…erm…CenturyLink. What’s interesting is that the rural telephone market…which also happens to include Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver and all of Oregon…seems to be converging to two or three carriers: CenturyLink, Windstream and Frontier, with Frontier a possible acquisition target down the road by one of the other two operators. Note that the consolidation talk reflecting future buy-outs is my conjecture, not that of the source I talked with.

4. Verizon will sell its remaining rural markets, but they may be bled dry before that happens
Verizon didn’t sell their rural Texas markets to Frontier in the gigantic July 1st swap, yet many of these markets will never see FiOS. So Verizon is shopping the markets around…somewhat…though at this point the price to Windstream is still much too high for the company to bite. In all likelihood, Verizon will wait too long to sell to a provider who actually cares about copper-based service, forcing the company to offer fire-sale pricing because they are selling copper plant rather than a customer base. WIndstream is good at keeping churn low, but I don’t hear about the company picking up new lines of service on copper infrastructure unless it’s DSL service for someone who already has a landline.

So, what do y’all think about the above?

The problem in my case had to do with embedding videos into the slideshow. You see, when Picasa exports a slideshow it takes advantage of some of the more esoteric specs of the MPEG-4 container, saving video clips, unmodified, with their accompanying audio alongside the photo slideshow, which includes your music track, captions, etc. So you get multiple video and audio streams “neatly” packaged into a single MPEG-4 container. Cool, right?

Right…as long as you have something that won’t roll over and die when it sees a multi-stream, multi-resolution container file coming down the pike.

Yes, I said multi-resolution; the camera that I used to take the videos built into the slideshow shoots at 720p. THe slideshow itself was outputted at 640×480. Add to that multiple audio stream formats (the music track was one thing, the videos were another) and you get a rather fragile system if your player doesn’t support the whole MPEG-4 container spec to a tee.

QuickTime took the whole thing in stride, though of course deciding 720p video on a 1.6 GHz Pentium M laptop is not as easy as dishing out 640×480. However every other application, transcoder (e.g. ffmpeg) or player (e.g. VLC…yes, even VLC didn’t get the clip right) either couldn’t deal with the video at all (ffmpeg) or was missing one or more of the audio or video tracks (YouTube and Vimeo…neither service transcoded the clip correctly).

Yes, YouTube butchered a video that was exported from Google’s own photo management software. They need to work on fixing that. I thought the issue was with the copyrighted music I had playing in the background (MercyMe’s All of Creation), but they’re actually perfectly fine with that, as I would expect Google to be. After I uploaded the video in a format the YouTube transcoder could parse correctly.

What was that format, and how did I get the darned thing to transcode correctly? Wait for it…MPEG-4…from QuickTime, via iMovie.

I imported my slideshow output file into iMovie (the new version, ’09 I believe), then used the Export to QuickTime option to get some fine-grained control on exactly what I was doing. The specific settings I used were as follows, though minor changes shouldn’t mess anything up…

• Video compression type: MPEG-4
• Frame rate: current
• Key frames: automatic
• Data rate: restrict to 1500 kbps (for quicker uploads over my 384k up DSL connection in TX; quality is still fine)
• Compressor quality: best
• VIdeo filter and size: no changes
• Sound format: AAC
• Channels: Mono
• Rate: 22.050 kHz
• Quality (under advanced settings): Best
• Bit rate: 64 kbps
• Encoding Strategy: Average Bit Rate
• Prepare for Internet Streaming: unchecked

The above settings got me a video that uploaded perfectly to YouTube, though it wouldn’t work right on this site’s (brand new) FlowPlayer install. Can’t win ‘em all I guess, though I’m sure for people exporting their slideshows from Picasa to YouTube their service is plenty.

When will Google fix Picasa’s multi-res MPEG-4 export issue, or tweak YouTube to import the videos without making scrambled eggs of the lot? Not sure. Maybe a few dozen retweets and a Digg posting will do the job.

Comment if you’ve run into this issue as well, and let me know if this fix worked. Also, if Picasa on Windows has this issue, let me know; I can test the process on a Windows box but haven’t done so yet. Unfortunately though, if the same issue exists, I know of no Windows application that can transcode its way out of this situation. Unless Apple still does the whole QuickTime Pro thing for Windows, post-OS X 10.6.

UPDATE 3: Added another news source. Swamped by homework so tweets will have to wait, but other than those I think I’ve got all the online info on the outage linked from here.

UPDATE 2: Added another couple of news sources, corrected one of my usual typos…some how I forgot to add a “not” into the paragraph about Wal-Mart taking credit card transactions. Sorry for the confusion. Also modified information based on an article from the Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post. The link below takes you to the subscriber-only version of the article; the non-subscriber snippet just makes the paper look bad (very little info).

UPDATE: Added some more news articles, (still) working on collecting all tweets about the incident, revised some information for accuracy (originally wasn’t sure about CricKet and Pocket, but they too were taken down by the outage…DSL was also apparently iffy in Kerrville).

Granted, I wasn’t in the area when it happened, but since I have plenty of family and friends down there I’m certainly going to talk about it!

Kerrville Daily Times Articles
March 24th Front Page (JPEG image)
Photo
Editorial
Note about landlines/safety
Info about 911 operations
Main article (covers cellular, credit cards, banks) Reprint in iStockAnalyst
Businesses adapt (anyone remember credit card imprint machines?)
Humorous recap by one Daily Times reporter (not a newspaper article)

MySanAntonio
911 article
Original article

Articles from other outlets
KENS5 KVUE WOAI WOAI VIdeo KSAT12 Boerne Star Burnet Bulletin Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post Blanco County News TMCNet

Rather scary stuff for the folks affected. The outage, by my calculations, lasted for a full seven hours, and knocked out cellular communications completely in the Hill Country. Verizon cells? Down. Sprint? Down. AT&T? Dead. T-Mobile? Not 100% sure, but probably gone. HCTC phone service? Nada. Pocket and CricKet were dead in the water as well.

Oddly enough, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post cites Five Star Wireless as not being down during the incident, for local or long distance service. This on one hand makes sense, as Five Star doesn’t necessarily use phone-company T1 lines to power their cell sites like other providers do. However I tried calling a Five Star connected friend yesterday during the outage and couldn’t get through. I’m going to keep poking around for more info on what happened with that provider.

On the landline front, you could call to your own exchange but no further. This was the case for both Verizon and Windstream…and, as remarked before, HCTC. Time Warner Cable digital voice users apparently had the reverse issues; able to call out but unable to call folks in town…just like everyone else in the world. Sprint’s IP-based long distance also stayed online…it’s what powers Time Warner Cable’s digital voice service (at least for the moment…see this article) and I suppose runs on TWC’s network in the Hill Country.

Internet was more of a mixed bag. Time Warner Cable’s fiber route is different from that of the AT&T cable that was cut (near Waring), so their service, including service for the City of Fredericksburg, continued unabated.

Windstream DSL also continued without issue in Fredericksburg; my mom’s workplace uses them and was able to send an e-mail out about the incident. The phone lines on which the DSL was served couldn’t call beyond Fredericksburg, but internet connectivity did just fine. Oddly enough, Kerrville DSL didn’t weather the outage with as much gusto, according to reports by the Kerrville Daily Times.

Verizon DSL was flat-out down. Bee Creek Communications, riding on that AT&T fiber for their backbone, was out as well. On the flip side, Hill Country Telephone Cooperative’s dual internet links (one to the north, one to the south) didn’t miss a beat. As such, Kerrville’s school system was also unaffected; they use HCTC.

The impact of the outage went a bit beyond calling from point A to point B. Gas stations and Fredericksburg’s Wal-Mart could not take credit card transactions. I’m guessing Wal-Mart has a T1 internet connection, and their T1 was down along with everyone else’s (Sprint and AT&T’s cellular backhauls, for example). The gas stations were probably using plain old telephone lines to process plastic. For some businesses, old-style credit card imprint machines were dragged out and used to process transactions, but for many businesses those machines just don’t exist, relegating purchases to cash or check only.

Last but not least, some banks stopped early for the day (the outage started around 3 p.m. Central Time), as they also tend to use T1 connections to get online. Other banks just processed transactions manually, following procedures similar to blackout protocol.

This just goes to show how much the Hill Country’s communications infrastructure relies on a single provider. Pretty scary if you ask me. It also shows that voice over IP, combined with a real redundant network, is just a good idea; with VoIP it doesn’t matter if you’re running on cable, DSL or mobile broadband, as long as you’ve got access to the Internet. It’s fortunate that the service came up when it did, that TWC, HCTC internet and Windstream DSL customers were apparently not affected, and that emergency services were quickly restored in the area. However running all communications through a single AT&T fiber link (as opposed to a ring, or at least some sort of redundant route!) is just plain bad policy.

Comments/thoughts/additions? Post ‘em!

Tweets compiled about the event (more coming):

Windstream – @bmodisett @kerrvillegossip yes there is an outage; currently no ETA ; fiber cut by another carrier^MC
HCTC – Another good reason to be on Hill Country’s Ethernet backhaul service! Listen up wireless carriers! Can you spell “Diverse Routes”. We can! Call me!!! http://bit.ly/bpPHZU
KerrvilleGossip - Phone service down,, Windstream to blame…. working on the story, looks like HCTC is about to be the BIG DOG! #kerrville (retweeted by bmodisett)\
KerrvilleGossip - Cell service is starting to come back! GO KERRVILLE!

bmodisett - what is up with #Kerrville and the cell phones, it was like they pulled the plug for everyone here.
MrAdkins - Any 3G outages going on out there in twitterland?
tsampson - Anyone in Kerrville experiencing cell phone/land phone outages? Please at reply for potential story on this crazyness.
bmodisett - @tsampson i guess windstream finally had it and are leaving town.
tsampson- @shueytexas Working theory is that Aliens have landed, sending out a electromagnetic pulse… or something to that effect.
tsampson - @mradkins Also, have you heard anything from any carriers? I went over to Windstream and Verizon. No cause yet.
mradkins - @tsampson Just in from Sprint: there is an AT&T Outage affecting both cell and landlines west of Boerne on I-10 and north to Dallas.
mradkins - @tsampson But not sure if this is true. One carrier will blame another. WS won’t say they have a problem even if you drop by.
tsampson - So it’s Apocalypse Cell in the Hill Country today. Read all about it in the Daily Times’ team coverage tomorrow.

KENS5 - Communications cut in Texas hill country, services impaired http://bit.ly/b0QhIz
KVUE - Communications cut in Texas Hill Country, services impaired: It’s a terrible Tuesday for some people living in the… http://bit.ly/bDnGdc
News4WOAI - Major communication outage in Hill Country area: News 4 WOAI has confirmed that a fiber line was cut somewhere bet… http://bit.ly/awvd1X (retweeted by barbaramagana)
KABBFOX29 - Cut Fiber Line Causes Large Outage in Hill Country: A contractor working on roadside drainage causes a major…
http://tinyurl.com/yh3fku5

phlezk - DUDE WTF? phones (cell AND LANDLINE) in the Hill Country (my home!) are DOWN?! HOW THE–?!
phlezk - News 4 WOAI confirmed a Verizon fiber line was cut somewhere between Fredericksburg & Comfort, causing outages throughout the Hill Country.
that1collegeguy - @phlezk Dude, the entire cell network is like…non-existent at the moment!
that1collegeguy - NEWS FLASH: Texas Hill Country economy collapsing rapidly due to cell & landline networks crashing. LifeAlert reports record “pushes”!
BobGambert - Anybody up in the Hill Country? Talk to me about the major comm outage.
bbridges620 - AT&T says it is Verizon’s fault phone are down in the Hill Country, Verizon says it’s AT&T. What is up with Red Vs Blue everywhere? (retweeted by Brandy_Williams)
jfstx - all verizon communications down in Hill Country, no cell, home service , sprint is limping along on 1xrtt
priskillya - the entire hill country was cell phone and land lineless today. i also had no internet. that’s ok cause i had to move. it was just a pain
katiewright - cell service is finally FINALLY back up after about seven hours of being down in the entire Hill Country area.
2dogexpedition - phones in hill country down someone cut a fiber optic
metroane - this fn blows…….major phone, cell, internet services out since 1pm in hill country, can’t upload mag to press……

TaxesNews4u – San Antonio News: Widespread phone outage in Hill Country: Kerr, Gillespie counties are among the areas affected http://bit.ly/aW1t1y
SanAntonioCP - San Antonio: Major communication outage in Hill Country area http://bit.ly/dw8pUi
tweetsa - Widespread phone outage in Hill Country http://bit.ly/ayMHTA
salocalnews - Major communication outage in Hill Country area – http://fx.ly/a/16_78e8750bdc
salocalnews - Widespread phone outage in Hill Country – http://fx.ly/a/16_ad169f14d2
MsTechAngel - Widespread phone outage in Hill Country: By Zeke MacCormack – Express-News Damage to an AT&T fiber-optic line caus… http://bit.ly/cwMjyH
JeffVaughn - Breaking: Parts of Hill Country experiencing phone outage, including #Kerville: http://tinyurl.com/ydvwm2m
wrstech - Major communication outage in Hill Country area http://shar.es/mgfnZ
wxProBrian - Red vs Blue! RT @ksatnews: Now, Verizon tells us it’s an AT&T Fiber line that was cut – causing phone/cell/net outages in Hill Country.
GSMTalks - GSMtalks :: Service returns after widespread phone outage in Hill Country http://bit.ly/bml2pm
SanAntonioLocks - Phone Lines Out In Hill Country: A severed AT&T fiber line has cut cell, land and Internet connections in the Hill… http://bit.ly/b8Q9cj

1. My mom saw a Verizon truck in the county fair parade today (I didn’t go; saw no need and was tired). The truck has “High Speed Internet coming soon!” or similar painted on te side. This is DSL, not FiOS (Verizon always refers to their fiber offering by its trademarked name). However from what I hear Verizon’s DSL release is just a ploy to drive up the sale cost of their system here; Fredericksburg isn’t a large metropolitan area, and there are too mayn bridged taps and other phone system anomaies here for DSL to reach beyond a small part of town. At least that’s what the scuttlebutt says. My prediction: Verizon offers some flavor of DSL to folks who can currently get Windstream DSL, then sells the system to whoever will take it, using the “we have DSL in our central office” argument to jack the price up slightly above what the system is worth.
2. Bee Creek Communications, the local our-hands-are-tied-and-if-anyone-competes-with-us-we-lose wireless ISP, was in the parade today as well. They also have a third-of-a-page ad in the paper advertising free installation to new customers until September 15th. A few years ago an installation with similar equipment would have run you around $220. The problem here is that their network is already over capacity in some areas, they’re spread too thinly in terms of manpower and their speeds are the stuff of yesteryear, barely competitive with satellite internet (though their monthly transfer caps are higher). The service also requires a two-year contract with a $125 early termination fee. If you want a one-year agreement service will run you another $10 per month. In short, don’t buy.
3. Clearwire is launching WiMAX service in San Antonio and Austin on September 1st. Maybe they’ll bring their service here. Would put Bee Creek right out of business, since Clear has an uncapped-download, one-megabit-upload (or is that uncapped too?) tier for a mere $45 per month. They even have cheaper tiers to compete with your garden-variety DSL options. They even have business tiers that will fill the gap between Bee Creek’s woefully slow packages and Time Warner Cable’s woefully expensive ones. In a nutshell, something for everyone as long as you’re within range of one of their towers. I’ll be keeping close track of what happens here. For what it’s worth, I told Bee Creek about Clear’s possible imminent launch nearby, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their larger-than-usual print ad was a direct result of this.
4. Hill Country Telephone Cooperative has run fiber around the city of Fredericksburg and plans to get CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) operations started before the end of the year, or something close to that anyway. They may just focus on high-end business operations (like they’re doing in nearby Kerrville, where they recently connected the city’s independent school district) however they’re a residential provider in their home area, so they know how to deal with “normal” customers. Plus, they have a lot of options for deploying service; in addition to their new fiber-optic network they have an AWS (1700 MHz cellular) license for this area, a 3.65 GHz “light license” which they’re using for WiMAX service in the nearby town of Mason, and maybe (if the price is right) Verizon’s old copper network, though I’m not sure why they’d want it. I heard HCTC offered $50 million for the network a few years back, and Verizon wanted $80 million fot it. Knowing that the network wasn’t worth that much, HCTC walked.

In short, it will be interesting to see what happens around here in the relatively near future with regard to internet service. Right now Time Warner Cable is the only provider who will give you more than a 2 Mbps connection (okay, HughesNet will give you 5 Mbps but they don’t count due to obscenely low caps and ridiculously high monthly fees). They’re also the only provider around here with customer-available fiber; Verizon apparently doesn’t have any. Sounds like that may change soon though. I’ll tell all I know (or am allowed to tell, whichever is less) as I find out more.

So the big question in my mind is, how would I design the perfect set top box, from both a consumer and a provider point of view? Here are some specs I came up with:

1. nVidia ION chipset. Everyone says the thing can decode 1080p video with no problem. Paired with a decent operating system and a halfway-decent processor (like the low-power Atom 330) you’ve got an STB that not only performs well, but also can be used for a variety of things and isn’t going to run up the power bill.
2. CableCard support, multiple streams. Granted, this is a given these days, but why not make things clear? RF video (via GPON) is what I’m assuming as the last mile medium; IPTV would work a bit differently of course.
3. Easy-access 12.5mm height 2.5″ hard disk bay to turn pa plain set top box into a DVR. Pop in a bare SATA drive and pay a one-time upgrade fee, then start recording shows. Or pay a slightly larger fee plus the price of a handpicked drive and a tech will do all of that for you. Bottom line: there should be no hardware difference between a regular set top box and an HD one, aside from the presence of a hard drive, or lack thereof. If you’re wondering why a 2.5″ drive, it’s because the drive is smaller and takes less power. If people want to store gobs of content they can add an external drive. There might come a time when all video content is cached at the edge of the network (networked DVRs) but until then, let people have as many bits in their box as they possibly can install.
4. Flash storage for non-video, namely the operating system and program guide. You want that stuff to load quickly, so why commit it to spinning metal when you can get enough flash to hold it for under $20?
5. HD on every STB so you can say that there’s no extra equipment required. Plus, having a single model of box makes things a whole lot easier to keep track of.
6. 2 USB ports. Aside from easy testing of devices, this would allow people to view media on their STB by plugging in a memory card reader or something equally quirky-but-cool. More importantly, people would be able to connect a whopping 2TB drive to their STB if they wanted and record shows onto it. The more shows they have recorded, the longer they’ll stick around to watch ‘em, and the longer they’ll pay for service. Also, you can hook…
7. …an external Blu-ray player to one of those USB ports. Make one that fits in with the decor of the typical media center and you’ve got yet another feature that makes that STB “sticky”. Why not? The onboard processor can handle it.
8. Whole-home functionality. No need having multiple DVRs recording the same thing when you can just pull between them. That way one DVR does all the work and the rest sit there with less stuff to break.
9. TiVo as the operating system, with no TiVo monthly fees. If you’re a service provider, you can probably work with TiVo on lowering the “price for life” subscription per box. Also, why use any other piece of software than the best? People say “I TiVoed that” just like they say “I googled that” so why not take advantage of the latent mindshare?
10. Farm out on-demand as much as possible, with an “you’re on our awesome box” commission of a few percent. Nobody wants to spend $8 on a cable-provided movie on demand. Though on the other hand some sports stuff has to be done that way, at which point just download the on-demand stuff over the internet rather than via RF.

The above list might make for an expensive” dumb” set top box, but then again it might now. I’m pretty sure that, when purchased in bulk, all the above components would total less than $200, so if you charge $8 per month per box with the first one free you’re making your money back before the boxes are obsolete. Plus the fact that you’re using a single box across your network will make things a lot easier to deal with for customer service. I’m pretty sure any provider who instituted all of the above would have people running from competitors, even if the service did cost a few bucks more per month. Then again, I’ve never had pay-TV in my life :p