About a year ago, I dumped my AT&T DSL connection in favor of our local cable broadband provider, Insight Communications. I did so because AT&T failed to follow through on one of its promises made when it bought BellSouth – that customers could receive discounted, DSL-only service (without the need to have phone service bundled in). Needless to say, I was very happy to leave the orbit of the Death Star, and even happier to have a locally-accessible alternative.
You can imagine my dismay when I read last spring that Comcast declared its intent to buy out Insight, and recently I received a letter in the mail informing me that I would officially become a Comcast customer in short order. Continue reading “Broadband in America: Freedom of Choice?”
Month: February 2008
Interesting Notes of Miscellany
Sporadic news-updates will continue for the next month and a half, as I tackle my last preliminary exam. But the rest of the site is current (save for a batch-check of the links library for broken stuff). So, in the meantime here are some updates on a few of my favorite things:
HD Radio: Industry skepticism of and resistance to the technology is growing. Oppositional broadcast engineers, who used to be considered on the “fringes” are now getting at least a semblance of respect in the trades dialogue. Much of this has to do with the real-world impact of HD-related interference, most notable now on the AM band but soon coming to an FM dial near you, especially when stations are given permission to boost the power of their digital sidebands (at the expense of analog signal quality). Results of an HD signal-related interference analysis commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – the first of its kind to really go into detail about FM-HD-related interference – should have been released by now, but hasn’t yet. Continue reading “Interesting Notes of Miscellany”