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isps-say-their-“excellent-customer-service”-is-why-users-don’t-switch-providers

ISPs say their “excellent customer service” is why users don’t switch providers

broadband, federal communications commission, Policy / /

Broadband customer service

ISPs tell FCC that mistreated users would switch to one of their many other options.

Credit: Getty Images | Thamrongpat Theerathammakorn

Lobby groups for Internet service providers claim that ISPs’ customer service is so good already that the government shouldn’t consider any new regulations to mandate improvements. They also claim ISPs face so much competition that market forces require providers to treat their customers well or lose them to competitors.

Cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association told the Federal Communications Commission in a filing that “providing high-quality products and services and a positive customer experience is a competitive necessity in today’s robust communications marketplace. To attract and retain customers, NCTA’s cable operator members continuously strive to ensure that the customer support they provide is effective and user-friendly. Given these strong marketplace imperatives, new regulations that would micromanage providers’ customer service operations are unnecessary.”

Lobby groups filed comments in response to an FCC review of customer service that was announced last month, before the presidential election. While the FCC’s current Democratic leadership is interested in regulating customer service practices, the Republicans who will soon take over opposed the inquiry.

USTelecom, which represents telcos such as AT&T and Verizon, said that “the competitive broadband marketplace leaves providers of broadband and other communications services no choice but to provide their customers with not only high-quality broadband, but also high-quality customer service.”

“If a provider fails to efficiently resolve an issue, they risk losing not only that customer—and not just for the one service, but potentially for all of the bundled services offered to that customer—but also any prospective customers that come across a negative review online. Because of this, broadband providers know that their success is dependent upon providing and maintaining excellent customer service,” USTelecom wrote.

While the FCC Notice of Inquiry said that providers should “offer live customer service representative support by phone within a reasonable timeframe,” USTelecom’s filing touted the customer service abilities of AI chatbots. “AI chat agents will only get better at addressing customers’ needs more quickly over time—and if providers fail to provide the customer service and engagement options that their customers expect and fail to resolve their customers’ concerns, they may soon find that the consumer is no longer a customer, having switched to another competitive offering,” the lobby group said.

Say what?

The lobby groups’ description may surprise the many Internet users suffering from little competition and poor customer service, such as CenturyLink users who had to go without service for over a month because of the ISP’s failure to fix outages. The FCC received very different takes on the state of ISP customer service from regulators in California and Oregon.

The Mt. Hood Cable Regulatory Commission in northwest Oregon, where Comcast is the dominant provider, told the FCC that local residents complain about automated customer service representatives; spending hours on hold while attempting to navigate automated voice systems; billing problems including “getting charged after cancelling service, unexpected price increases, and being charged for equipment that was returned,” and service not being restored quickly after outages.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) told the FCC that it performed a recent analysis finding “that only a fraction of California households enjoy access to a highly competitive market for [broadband Internet service], with only 26 percent of households having a choice between two or more broadband providers utilizing either cable modem or fiber optic technologies.” The California agency said the result “suggests that competitive forces alone are insufficient to guarantee service quality for customers who depend upon these services.”

CPUC said its current rulemaking efforts for California “will establish standards for service outages, repair response time, and access to live representatives.” The agency told the FCC that if it adopts new customer service rules for the whole US, it should “permit state and local governments to set customer service standards that exceed the adopted standards.”

People with disabilities need more help, groups say

The FCC also received a filing from several advocacy groups focused on accessibility for people with disabilities. The groups asked for rules “establishing baseline standards to ensure high-quality DVC [direct video calling for American Sign Language users] across providers, requiring accommodations for consumers returning rental equipment, and ensuring accessible cancellation processes.” The groups said that “providers should be required to maintain dedicated, well-trained accessibility teams that are easily reachable via accessible communication channels, including ASL support.”

“We strongly caution against relying solely on emerging AI technologies without mandating live customer service support,” the groups said.

The FCC’s Notice of Inquiry on customer service was approved 3–2 in a party-line vote on October 10. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said that hundreds of thousands of customers file complaints each year “because they have run into issues cancelling their service, are saddled with unexpected charges, are upset by unexplained outages, and are frustrated with billing issues they have not been able to resolve on their own. Many describe being stuck in ‘doom loops’ that make it difficult to get a real person on the line to help with service that needs repair or to address charges they believe are a mistake.”

If the FCC leadership wasn’t changing hands, the Notice of Inquiry could be the first step toward a rulemaking. “We cannot ignore these complaints, especially not when we know that it is possible to do better… We want to help improve the customer experience, understand what tools we have to do so, and what gaps there may be in the law that prevent consumers from having the ability to resolve routine problems quickly, simply, and easily,” Rosenworcel said.

ISPs have a friend in Trump admin

But the proceeding won’t go any further under incoming Chairman Brendan Carr, a Republican chosen by President-elect Donald Trump. Carr dissented from the Notice of Inquiry, saying that the potential actions explored by the FCC exceed its authority and that the topic should be handled instead by the Federal Trade Commission.

Carr said the FCC should work instead on “freeing up spectrum and eliminating regulatory barriers to deployment” and that the Notice of Inquiry is part of “the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to deflect attention away from the necessary course correction.”

Carr has made it clear that he is interested in regulating broadcast media and social networks more than the telecom companies the FCC traditionally focuses on. Carr wrote a chapter for the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 in which he criticized the FCC for “impos[ing] heavy-handed regulation rather than relying on competition and market forces to produce optimal outcomes.”

With Carr at the helm, ISPs are likely to get what they’re asking for: No new regulations and elimination of at least some current rules. “Rather than saddling communications providers with unnecessary, unlawful, and potentially harmful regulation, the Commission should encourage the pro-consumer benefits of competition by reducing the regulatory burdens and disparities that are currently unfairly skewing the marketplace,” the NCTA told the FCC, arguing that cable companies face more onerous regulations than other communications providers.

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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Finally, a sign of life for Europe’s sovereign satellite Internet constellation

broadband, Commercial space, European Union, Internet, iris2, Science, Space / /

The estimated 10 billion-plus euro cost of the IRIS² program is nearly double initial projections. European officials also confirmed the sovereign satellite network won’t begin providing services to European government customers until 2030, three years later than the commission’s previous schedule.

Rising costs and negotiations over how much governments and industry will pay for IRIS² have delayed the contract award for months. Earlier this year, press reports indicated the SpaceRISE consortium’s proposal for IRIS² carried a total cost of 12 billion euros. It seems the price has been negotiated down, at least by a small percentage, to around 10 billion.

It’s also worth noting that the EU will this year only commit to funding the IRIS² initiative through the end 0f 2027, when the commission’s seven-year budget framework expires. It’s almost certain the IRIS² program will require more government funding beyond 2027, but the European Commission said it will decide later on additional money, subject to the “availability of the corresponding appropriations.”

In April, a senior official in the German government, the EU’s top contributor, called for the IRIS² program to be restarted. Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, called the proposed 12 billion euro price “exorbitant” and said the entire project was “ill-conceived” in a letter to Thierry Breton, then the EU’s internal market commissioner, according to a report in the Germany newspaper Handelsblatt.

Habeck’s protest obviously did not stop the European Commission from awarding the contract to the SpaceRISE consortium. The 12-year agreement will cover the development, deployment, and operation of at least 290 satellites placed at different orbital altitudes, from low-Earth orbit up to medium-Earth orbit several thousand miles above the planet.

At these higher altitudes, IRIS² can cover the globe with fewer satellites than Starlink, OneWeb, or Amazon Kuiper.

The commission’s press release said the agreement, the largest space contract in EU history, should be signed in December. At that time, “legal and financial commitment from both parties will be taken,” the commission said.

The SpaceRISE consortium includes numerous European satellite and telecom companies, including spacecraft manufacturers Airbus Defence and Space, Thales Alenia Space, and OHB. Telespazio, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Hisdesat, and Thales SIX are also part of the industry group.

These companies are typically competitors in the satellite and telecom markets, as are SES, Eutelsat, and Hispasat, which head up the consortium. Getting all the contractors and subcontractors to play nice with one another will be no small feat.

Finally, a sign of life for Europe’s sovereign satellite Internet constellation Read More »

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ISPs tell Supreme Court they don’t want to disconnect users accused of piracy

broadband, copyright infringement, Policy / /
The US Supreme Court building is seen on a sunny day. Kids mingle around a small pool on the grounds in front of the building.

Enlarge / The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, DC, in May 2023.

Getty Images | NurPhoto

Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn’t be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks.

While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy “would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access.” The legal question presented by the case “is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet,” they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday.

The amici curiae brief was filed by Altice USA (operator of the Optimum brand), Frontier Communications, Lumen (aka CenturyLink), and Verizon. The brief supports cable firm Cox Communications’ attempt to overturn its loss in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Sony. Cox petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case last month.

Sony and other music copyright holders sued Cox in 2018, claiming it didn’t adequately fight piracy on its network and failed to terminate repeat infringers. A US District Court jury in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in December 2019 that Cox must pay $1 billion in damages to the major record labels.

Cox won a partial victory when the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated the $1 billion verdict, finding that Cox wasn’t guilty of vicarious infringement because it did not profit directly from infringement committed by users of its cable broadband network. But the appeals court affirmed the jury’s finding of willful contributory infringement and ordered a new damages trial.

Future of Internet at stake, ISPs say

The Altice/Frontier/Lumen/Verizon brief said the 4th Circuit ruling “imperils the future of the Internet” by “expos[ing] Internet service providers to massive liability if they do not carry out mass Internet evictions.” Cutting off a subscriber’s service would hurt other residents in a home “who did not infringe and may have no connection to the infringer,” they wrote.

The automated processes used by copyright holders to find infringement on peer-to-peer networks are “famously flawed,” ISPs wrote. Despite that, the appeals court’s “view of contributory infringement would force Internet service providers to cut off any subscriber after receiving allegations that some unknown person used the subscriber’s connection for copyright infringement,” the brief said.

Under the 4th Circuit’s theory, “an Internet service provider acts culpably whenever it knowingly fails to stop some bad actor from exploiting its service,” the brief said. According to the ISPs, this “would compel Internet service providers to engage in wide-scale terminations to avoid facing crippling damages, like the $1 billion judgment entered against Cox here, the $2.6 billion damages figure touted by these same plaintiffs in a recent suit against Verizon, or the similarly immense figures sought from Frontier and Altice USA.”

Potential liability for ISPs is up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each work that is infringed, the brief said. “Enterprising plaintiffs’ lawyers could seek to hold Internet service providers liable for every bad act that occurs online,” they wrote. This threat of financial liability detracts from the ISPs’ attempts “to fulfill Congress’s goal of connecting all Americans to the Internet,” the ISPs said.

ISPs tell Supreme Court they don’t want to disconnect users accused of piracy Read More »

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China’s Long March 6A rocket is making a mess in low-Earth orbit

broadband, china, long march 6a, military space, Science, Space, space command, telecom / /

Another one —

After nearly every flight, the upper stage of this rocket breaks apart in orbit.

–

Debris from the upper stage of China's Long March 6A rocket captured from the ground by Slingshot Aerospace.

Enlarge / Debris from the upper stage of China’s Long March 6A rocket captured from the ground by Slingshot Aerospace.

The upper stage from a Chinese rocket that launched a batch of Internet satellites Tuesday has broken apart in space, creating a debris field of at least 700 objects in one of the most heavily-trafficked zones in low-Earth orbit.

US Space Command, which tracks objects in orbit with a network of radars and optical sensors, confirmed the rocket breakup Thursday. Space Command initially said the event created more than 300 pieces of trackable debris. The military’s ground-based radars are capable of tracking objects larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches).

Later Thursday, LeoLabs, a commercial space situational awareness company, said its radars detected at least 700 objects attributed to the Chinese rocket. The number of debris fragments could rise to more than 900, LeoLabs said.

The culprit is the second stage of China’s Long March 6A rocket, which lifted off Tuesday with the first batch of 18 satellites for a planned Chinese megaconstellation that could eventually number thousands of spacecraft. The Long March 6A’s second stage apparently disintegrated after placing its payload of 18 satellites into a polar orbit.

Space Command said in a statement it has “observed no immediate threats” and “continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain.” According to LeoLabs, radar data indicated the rocket broke apart at an altitude of 503 miles (810 kilometers) at approximately 4: 10 pm EDT (20: 10 UTC) on Tuesday, around 13-and-a-half hours after it lifted off from northern China.

At this altitude, it will take decades or centuries for the wispy effect of aerodynamic drag to pull the debris back into the atmosphere. As the objects drift lower, their orbits will cross paths with SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites, the International Space Station and other crew spacecraft, and thousands more pieces of orbital debris, putting commercial and government satellites at risk of collision.

A new debris field of nearly 1,000 objects would be a significant addition to the approximately 46,000 objects Space Command tracks in Earth orbit. According to statistics compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who monitors global launch and spaceflight activity, this would rank in the top five of all debris-generation events since the dawn of the Space Age.

This rocket has a track record

The medium-class Long March 6A rocket has launched seven times since debuting in March 2022, and military and commercial satellite tracking organizations have reported several breakups of the rocket’s upper stage. In November 2022, a Long March 6A upper stage disintegrated in orbit, creating a debris field of more than 500 trackable objects, according to NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office.

Commercial satellite tracking companies observed smaller debris fields following several other Long March 6A flights this year.

In its space environment statistics report, the European Space Agency says there have been more than 640 “breakups, explosions, collisions, or anomalous events resulting in fragmentation” in orbit. So these things happen frequently. But it’s not clear what makes the Long March 6A, which has a relatively short flight history, particularly vulnerable to creating debris.

A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China's Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.

Enlarge / A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.

Most rockets operating today either reignite their engines to reenter the atmosphere after deploying their payloads, or if that’s not feasible, they “passivate” themselves to empty their propellant tanks and drain their batteries to reduce the risk of an explosion.

In a report last year, NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office said the Long March 6A upper stage has a mass of about 5,800 kilograms (12,800 pounds) without kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants. It is powered by a single YF-115 engine.

The launch Tuesday began the deployment of China’s “Thousand Sails” Internet network, which will initially consist of 1,296 satellites, with the possibility to expand to more than 14,000 spacecraft. This will require numerous launches, some of which will presumably use the Long March 6A.

“If even a fraction of the launches needed to field this Chinese megaconstellation generate as much debris as this first launch, the result would be a notable addition to the space debris population in LEO (low-Earth orbit),” said Audrey Schaffer, vice president of strategy and policy at Slingshot Aerospace, a commercial satellite tracking and analytics firm.

China has been responsible for several space debris incidents beyond the latest problems with the Long March 6A rocket. In 2007, China destroyed one of its own spacecraft in an anti-satellite missile test. This was the worst-ever instance of creating space debris, resulting in more than 3,000 trackable objects, and an estimate 150,000 or more smaller fragments.

On four occasions from 2020 through 2022, the massive core stage of China’s heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket has reentered the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner, raising concerns that falling debris could put people and property at risk on Earth.

China plans more flights with its Long March 5B and Long March 6A rockets. China continued flying the Long March 5B rocket despite the risk it posed to people on the ground. Debris fields in orbit, however, don’t directly threaten any people on Earth, but they do raise the risk to satellites of all nations, including China’s own spacecraft.

“Events like this highlight the importance of adherence to existing space debris mitigation guidelines to reduce the creation of new space debris and underscore the need for robust space domain awareness capabilities to rapidly detect, track, and catalog newly-launched space objects so they can be screened for potential conjunctions,” Schaffer said in a statement.

This story was updated with the detection of additional debris fragments by LeoLabs.

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China begins launching a megaconstellation, and it sounds a lot like Starlink

broadband, china, launch, Science, Space, starlink, telecom, thousand sails / /

Sailing in LEO —

Like Starlink, China’s Qianfan satellites have an easy-to-pack flat-panel design.

–

A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China's Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.

Enlarge / A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.

Chinese officials have long signaled their interest in deploying a satellite network, or maybe several, to beam broadband Internet signals across China and other nations within its sphere of influence.

Two serious efforts are underway in China to develop a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink network, which the Chinese government has banned in its territory. The first batch of 18 satellites for one of those Chinese networks launched into low-Earth orbit Tuesday.

A Long March 6A rocket delivered the 18 spacecraft into a polar orbit following liftoff at 2: 42 am EDT (06: 42 UTC) from the Taiyuan launch base in northern China’s Shanxi province. The Long March 6A is one of China’s newest rockets—and the country’s first to employ strap-on solid rocket boosters—with the ability to deploy a payload of up to 4.5 metric tons (9,900 pounds) into a 700-kilometer (435-mile) Sun-synchronous orbit.

The rocket placed its payload of 18 Qianfan satellites into the proper orbit, and the launch mission was a complete success, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the largest state-owned contractor for the Chinese space program.

Qianfan translates to “Thousand Sails,” and the 18 satellites launched Tuesday are the first of potentially thousands of spacecraft planned by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), a company backed by Shanghai’s municipal government. The network developed by SSST is also called the “Spacesail Constellation.”

Shanghai officials only began releasing details of this constellation last year. A filing with the International Telecommunication Union suggests the developers of Shanghai-based megaconstellation initially plan to deploy 1,296 satellites at an altitude of about 1,160 kilometers (721 miles).

Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, said the constellation “will provide global users with low-latency, high-speed and ultra-reliable satellite broadband Internet services.”

Opening the floodgates?

SSST’s network was previously known as G60 Starlink, referencing a major cross-country highway in China and the project’s intent to imitate SpaceX’s broadband service.

Thousand Sails may eventually consist of more than 14,000 satellites, but like other Internet megaconstellations, the size of the fleet will likely grow at a rate commensurate with demand. It will take many years for SSST to deploy a 14,000-satellite constellation, if it ever does. SpaceX has rolled out several generations of Starlink satellites to offer new services and more capacity to meet customer uptake.

Chinese officials have released few details about the Qianfan satellites. But the project’s backers have said the spacecraft has a “standardized and modular” flat-panel design. “It meets the needs of stacking multiple satellites with one rocket,” said Shanghai Gesi Aerospace Technology, a joint venture set up by SSST and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to oversee manufacturing of Qianfan satellites.

This sounds a lot like the design of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which are flat-packed for launch on Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX pioneered this way of launching and deploying large numbers of satellites. The approach used for Starlink, and apparently for Qianfan, streamlines the integration of multiple satellites with their launcher on the ground. It also simplifies their separation from the rocket once in orbit.

The new Qianfan satellite factory in Shanghai can produce up to 300 spacecraft per year, project officials said in December. Officials previously said the first 108 satellites for the Thousand Sails constellation would launch this year.

SSST announced in February it had raised more than $900 million from Chinese state-backed investment funds, Shanghai’s municipal government, and sources of venture capital. SSST’s origin is linked to a Chinese joint venture with a Germany-based company called KLEO Connect, which intended to develop a smaller constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites for data relay services.

China launched four technology demonstration satellites, purportedly related to the KLEO Connect venture, to test telecom hardware and electric propulsion systems in orbit. The joint venture fell apart with a flurry of lawsuits, and the German government last year blocked a complete takeover of KLEO Connect by its Chinese investors.

Now, SSST is going it alone with the Thousand Sails network. It has rapidly scaled up satellite manufacturing capacity in Shanghai. But outside of Starlink, companies with ideas for megaconstellations have run into serious headwinds.

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in 2020 before eventually launching its entire first-generation network of 633 Internet satellites. Amazon has pushed back the full-scale deployment of its Project Kuiper megaconstellation, and the launch of the first operational Kuiper Internet satellites may be delayed again to 2025. The future of the European Union’s IRIS² satellite Internet network is in doubt after disagreements among European governments on funding the project.

The Thousand Sails constellation is less well-known than another planned Chinese satellite Internet network known as Guowang, or “national network,” which is supported by China’s central government. Guowang is owned by a state-backed company called SatNet, and its architecture will consist of 13,000 satellites. However, China has not yet launched any spacecraft for the Guowang project.

It’s unclear if the Thousand Sails network and the Guowang constellation will be direct competitors. They could be geared to different segments of the broadband market. In either case, China’s restrictive Internet policies with terrestrial networks will likely spill over into the satellite segment.

Chinese officials recognize the military utility of satellite Internet services like Starlink, which has supported Ukrainian military forces fighting Russian troops since 2022. A homegrown Starlink-like service would, no doubt, prove useful for China’s military.

Alongside potential domestic civilian users, China could use its satellite Internet networks as a diplomatic tool to build on existing partnerships between the Chinese government and developing countries. This could “lead to a leapfrogging moment, where African countries opt for the Chinese Internet constellation over Western providers due to the fact that much of their infrastructure is already Chinese-built,” the Royal United Services Institute, a UK think tank, wrote in a report last year.

While there are open questions about how China will use its satellite megaconstellations, their deployment will require a significant increase in the country’s launch capacity, driving the development of new commercial rockets, including reusable boosters, to lower costs and increase their flight rate.

China begins launching a megaconstellation, and it sounds a lot like Starlink Read More »