Frontier agrees to ~$20M price cuts for not delivering on “up to 6 megabit” claims

US-ASK-SAM-Speeds-by-Companies-320“Up to” claims generally False Advertising. Connecticut-based Frontier must, “reduce its monthly rate for affected customers to $9.99 – a savings of $10 to $20 per month. The reduced rate will remain in effect until the mandated improvements allow Frontier to increase existing download speeds provisioned at 1.5 Mbps or lower to at least 6 Mbps.” In addition, Frontier must spend $150M more than planned on upgrades. The cost of their settlement is over $6.000 for each of 28,000 homes affected. 

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey achieved something neither Britain’s OFCOM, Germany’s BNetzA or the U.S. FCC or FTC have ever achieved. Since the frist consumer broadband lines were installed around 1999, telcos have knowingly misled customers on both speed and pricing.

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Encryption: Free Marketers join Progressives to Protect Encryption

Ed Snowden put his life on the line to prove all larger Western countries were massively spying on their own people. Dozens of top people, including AT&T CEOs Randall Stephenson and Ed Whitacre, could have been sent to jail. The reaction in the U.S., France and England was to change the laws to allow almost all of the spying to continue. Barack Obama as a Senator and when campaigning wanted the laws enforced. As President, he decided to go along with the security agencies.

The latest battleground is encryption. The security forces want to make sure no encryption can lock them out. With 75%+ of the population scared enough to give security anything they ask, basic privacy protections are disappearing. Those who think the government shouldn’t be able to spy on everything we do on the Internet have a tough battle.

200 organizations have now signed An open letter to the leaders of the world to hold back this tide. They include the market-oriented TechFreedom group, which rarely sides with progressives. As Kevin Martin said to me, “Some issues are not Republican or Democrat, left or right.

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