uStudy: Home Broadband Subscriptions Are Falling As More Americans Live By The Smartphoner

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  There’s a general feeling in the air that mobile everything is the wave of the future. Optimized websites, streaming apps, new data packages… everything points to a continuing trend of our lives centering around the pocket computers we all carry and still anachronistically call “phones.” It’s one of those things we all “know,” anecdotally as much as anything else. But now there’s new data showing that not only is the mobile future already here, but also it’s robust enough that consumers are starting to pull the plug on their home internet connections.

  The Pew Research Center takes a regular look at how, when, where, and why Americans are or aren’t accessing the Internet. For 20 years, home internet use across all demographics was on the rise, albeit more slowly in some segments of society than in others. But their most recent study has a few surprising findings: home broadband access apparently peaked in 2013, and has dropped or, at best, stayed level, across every slice of society over the past two years.

  Home broadband use hit its high point when it reached 70% of Americans, Pew reports. Now, it’s down to 67%. While three percentage points doesn’t seem all that huge, it’s a surprising backward step in an otherwise only-upward trend — and also represents millions of households.

  
  
  It’s also not an isolated or narrow effect: the only demographic segment not to lose broadband subscribers were those with incomes between $75,000 and $100,000, according to Pew. That set of folks stayed stable, with 88% having home service. All other groups — including those at the top of the money heap, with incomes over $100,000 — saw home broadband use drop between 2% and 8% during this period of time.

  But not having home broadband from a cable or telecom provider doesn’t mean families aren’t accessing the internet; they’re just going mobile-only. Overall, Pew found that 13% of Americans only had access to a smartphone for internet connectivity, up 5% since 2013.

  The highest concentration of smartphone-only users is found, generally, among the young and the poor: Americans under age 29, with incomes under $20,000, not educated past high school, and/or minority groups. And that tracks with what Pew found is the most dominant reason survey respondents gave for not having home broadband service: the cost. 33% of those without broadband at home said the service is simply too expensive.

  Even among wealthier groups, though, the shift to mobile feels fairly inevitable in the long run. It makes intuitive sense that with the tech available, everyone will move to access-anywhere data over time in the same way that most home users have drifted away from desktop computers and toward portable devices.

  But despite the many and rapid advances in mobile technology, a life lived only on 4G is still not quite on par with traditional, fixed broadband. Mobile connectivity remains generally slower and the data caps far, far lower. The cost-per-gigabyte for mobile streaming is still ludicrously higher than for WiFi. (In our test-case scenario last year, we calculated up to a 2000% difference for plausible real-world streaming video use on cable vs. on 4G.)

  Of course, this is also where all of those zero rating programs, like T-Mobile’s new Binge On, come in handy. If streaming video, 70% of prime-time internet use, doesn’t count against your data caps, that can become another tick mark in the “drop the Comcast bill, already” column for many users.

  The FCC’s job to shape policy so that broadband access is available to everyone who wants it, and they have to provide regular reports on their progress. The FCC mentioned the presence and effects of mobile data in the 2012 and 2015 reports, but the commission is still undecided on how, specifically, they should count mobile broadband access in their tallies. They are asking how they should make that decision, though, which is the first step in the bureaucratic process of actually doing it.

  Still, it’s much too soon to start crowing over the demise of cable. The survey respondents who don’t have broadband access at home weren’t exactly happy about it. Over half, across all races, felt that not having home access put them at a disadvantage for job hunting, Nearly half, 46%, felt that not having home service hurt them when it came to learning about or accessing government services. And well over 40% also felt that that they were missing out on opportunities to get health information or learn other new things that would improve their lives.

  In total, 69% of all respondents, both with and without access at home, said they felt that those without home broadband were at a significant disadvantage. Seems like the FCC continues to have its work cut out.

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uSeaWorld Visitors Stuck On Sky Tower Ride For Over 3 Hoursr

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• Some visitors to SeaWorld in Orlando experienced an amusement park nightmare yesterday as the ride they were on became stuck a few hundred feet in the air. The Sky Tower was on its way back to the ground, carrying about 50 passengers, when the emergency brake malfunctioned and the pod would no longer descend.
  ‘
  Local TV station WESH did a helicopter fly by for broadcast. While one passenger told a news station over the phone that someone on board was having a very understandable “panic attack,” everyone was medically fine later when the pod reached the ground.

  They spent over three hours trapped in the pod, admiring the scenery and wondering where their lives had gone wrong. One passenger shared the entire ordeal live on Twitter’s live-streaming app, Periscope, because nothing really happens in this life unless you share it with the entire Internet.

  “Glad we weren’t on some type of upside-down rollercoaster,” the Periscoper told WESH. “This was much safer and much better.” Yes, if you have to spend three hours trapped mid-ride on anything in an amusement park, this would be a good choice.

  Some sources report that the passengers were trapped on the ride as a recording of Christmas music played on a loop, leaving us to wonder what, precisely, one thinks about while listening to “Winter Wonderland” and “Let it Snow” while suspended 200 feet in the air in an observation pod 200 feet above an amusement park in the tropics.

  People on SeaWorld Orlando ride were trapped for more than 3 hours [WESH]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uIf Comcast Is Going To Enforce Data Caps, It Has To Provide More Accurate Info To Customersr

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  Another day, another story calling into question the validity of the data caps that Comcast has brought to a number of new markets in recent months.

  Over at Credit.com, Bob Sullivan has the story of a Georgia family who have been surpassing the 300GB monthly allotment every month since Comcast brought the caps and overage fees to their area. They paid $70 for the first month’s overage fees, $90 for the next. But now they are really wondering just how accurate Comcast’s measuring is.

  That’s because they found out on Dec. 7 that they had, according to Comcast, already exhausted their entire 300GB for the month.

  “What?? It’s only 7 days into the billing cycle!!!” the customer wrote to Sullivan. “This seems ridiculous since we have only been home TWO of these days!!! We will probably be billed an extra $100 to $140 in overage costs just for this month. I spoke with three different people, including management, and got no help.”

  As some people who stopped reading this story after the previous paragraph will inevitably write to me to explain, it’s entirely possible that someone could reach 300GB in just a few days. Full-length HD movies and TV shows quickly consume gigabytes, as does downloading large video games. Video chats can also pig out at the data trough.

  That’s not the point. The point is that Comcast is not doing a good job of communicating to customers exactly how it calculates usage.

  Remember when you had to pay for long distance phone calls? If your phone bill went up by $150 one month, you could quickly look at your itemized statement and see that one of your kids was calling their pen pal in Tuva three times a week.

  And the new era of web-connected home devices, like smart thermostats, lights, and appliances, can often show you exactly when they used the most electricity, natural gas, or other resource.

  But not so for Comcast.

  “There is no data meter showing the hours of data usage or what was downloaded either, which is suspect,” the customer tells Sullivan. “They only provide the totals of data, but this isn’t helpful or specific.”

  Comcast does use a third party to verify the accuracy of its metering system [PDF], but that hasn’t stopped the company from royally screwing up, like when it insisted that a Tennessee customer was using hundreds of gigabytes, even though his home modem was not even connected at the time.

  Likewise, a look through the thousands of complaints unearthed by CutCableToday’s FOIA request shows numerous claims of inaccurate metering.

  Meter-related complaints from Georgia abound in the FCC filings. One customer from the state says his online accounting from Comcast shows that he’s used 271GB so far in the month, while his router shows that only 147GB had gone back and forth from his home network during the same time period. Again, it’s possible that the router information is incomplete, but Comcast is holding its cards too close to its chest on this one.

  Yet another Atlanta customer says that the data caps have doubled his bill by $140 while doubting the accuracy of Comcast’s metrics.

  “This month I have minimized my internet usage out of fear and discovered that in the first week of the month, according to Comcast, I have already used my allotted bank of 300GB,” the customer wrote the FCC on Oct. 8. “There is no means for the consumer to accurately gauge the exact amount of data usage except for the meter provided by Comcast, and after reviewing my usage for the last week, I find it to [be] highly suspect and inaccurate. In a nutshell, this company is robbing its customers and needs to be under higher scrutiny.”

  Other customers from Georgia complain about being unable to access their online meters at all. One Atlanta user complained to the FCC that his tracker had been down for 26 days during the previous billing cycle. That’s nothing compared to the claim from another customer in the area who says his meter was down for six months before Comcast finally decided to suspend metering on his account until they figured out the problem.

  Sullivan was able to get someone at Comcast to speak to his reader about metering, but that discussion didn’t seem to do very much to quell her concerns.

  “We have a better understanding on what could be using up our data each month, but there isn’t anything we can do about it,” she tells Sullivan. “We weren’t able to get a refund on the data charges or regulate our data usage without getting rid of devices. We still don’t have any proof that we are actually using that amount of data, and there isn’t a specific data meter going forward telling us what we are using.”

  Comcast maintains that only a small percentage of its customers are currently impacted by these data caps. Unless the company figures out a way to demonstrate that its measurements are accurate — and that customers get more precise information about when and how much data was used during a billing period — this could be a mammoth disaster waiting to happen when Comcast expands the caps to its full roster of more than 20 million customers.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uFord, Google Reportedly Teaming Up For Driverless Car Projectr

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  Just a week after Ford announced it would be joining the auto pack and heading to California to test a driverless car next year, the company is reportedly adding a player to its autonomous vehicle team: Google. 

  Yahoo Autos, citing people familiar with the matter, reports that Ford and Google are teaming up to build self-driving vehicles.

  Under the partnership, which is expected to be announced during the Consumer Electronics Show next month, the car would be built by Ford and using Google’s self-driving technology.

  By joining with Google, Ford’s driverless car dreams will receive a significant boost: Google currently has 53 test vehicles on the road (sometimes driving too slow) in California and Texas.

  Specifics on the deal, such as who would be liable for crashes involving the autonomous vehicles were unclear.

  News of a joint venture between the tech company and a car manufacturer isn’t exactly surprising. Yahoo Autos reports that Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the company was looking for manufacturing partners that would use the company’s self-driving system.

  According to Yahoo Autos, the deal is said to be non-exclusive, with both parties free to work with others in the future.

  While Google declined to comment on the partnership, a spokesperson for Ford said the company works with many others on its Ford Smart Mobility plan, noting “we keep these discussions private for obvious competitive reasons, and we do not comment on speculation.”

  Google Pairs With Ford To Build Self-Driving Cars [Yahoo Autos]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uNestlé Pledges To Use Only Cage-Free Eggs By 2020r

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  The list of major food companies and restaurants pledging to only use cage-free eggs in the future grew by one today: Nestlé announced a new goal of only using cage-free eggs in its wide array of products by 2020. 

  The commitment to stop using eggs laid by caged hens in its U.S. products makes Nestlé the largest packaged food company to go cage-free.

  In its announcement on Tuesday, the world’s largest food maker said it will use nearly 20 million pounds of cage-free eggs annually in its products, including Toll House cookie dough, Haagen-Dazs ice cream, Buitoni pasta, Lean Cuisine breakfast meals, and Stouffer’s breakfast items.

  Currently, the company says none of the eggs used in its products are cage-free.

  “Our products are in the fridges and pantries of socially-conscious consumers across the United States, and we share their belief in the importance of responsibly-sourced ingredients,” Paul Grimwood, Chairman and CEO of Nestlé USA, said in a statement.

  Nestlé’s move toward cage-free eggs was quickly met with applause by activists and animal rights groups.

  “We’ve been proud to work with Nestlé for the last several years on this and other animal welfare initiatives,” Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the U.S., said in a blog post. “This is the humane economy in action, with major players like Nestlé and so many more working to eliminate cruel cages and other inhumane practices from their supply chains, demanding better for animals, and proving that doing good is an important part of doing well.”

  Nestlé is just the latest food company to join the cage-free egg movement. Rival General Mills announced its intention to use only cage-free eggs by 2025 last month.

  In November, Kellogg promised in October that it would only use eggs from cage-free hens by 2035.

  In the restaurant world, Panera promised to source only cage-free eggs by 2020; McDonald’s pledged to go the cage-free route for all eggs served in its 16,000 U.S. and Canadian locations within 10 years; Taco Bell is aiming for cage-free eggs by the end of 2016 and Burger King is working toward a 2017 deadline for its cage-free initiative.

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uDebt Collectors Can Sue You, But Court Might Not Let You Sue Debt Collector Backr

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  A new report claims that a growing number of debt collectors are trying to exploit a legal loophole that allows them to bring potentially frivolous lawsuits against alleged debtors, but bars those defendants from bringing their own legal action against the debt collector.

  Once again, we’re looking at an abuse of “forced arbitration” — the Supreme Court-backed practice of inserting incredibly restrictive clauses into contracts and other customer agreements. These clauses compel the customer to resolve any legal dispute with the company through binding third-party arbitration instead of in a courtroom. Additionally, most arbitration agreements prohibit the customer from joining together with similarly wronged victims to have their matter heard as one case — even before an arbitrator. Instead, each individual victim must make their own case in arbitration.

  The few supporters of arbitration clauses are quick to point out that these contract terms also block the company from taking the customers to court.

  But according to the New York Times, some collectors believe they have figured out how to make arbitration a one-way street in their favor.

  A Maryland man tells the Times that he learned — after the fact — that a debt collector had successfully sued to garnish his wages, even though the collector wasn’t licensed to collect debts in the state. But when he tried to bring a class action lawsuit against the collector, the company successfully convinced the court to prevent the case from moving forward — not because it lacked merit, but because the man had signed an arbitration clause with the original lender.

  That’s right, the collector wasn’t invoking any sort of contractual agreement it had with the customer, but an agreement that he — like millions of people every day — unwittingly signed without any ability to change the terms.

  In the Maryland case, the debt collector couldn’t even prove to the court that this particular customer had an arbitration clause in his original contract with Citi from ten years earlier. Instead, the collector merely showed the court that Citi contracts currently have these clauses in them.

  And this is a typical issue with debt collectors. A 2013 report from the Federal Trade Commission found that only a small fraction of debt buyers are given adequate supporting documents to even prove that a debt is still owed, let alone that any sort of arbitration clause was signed.

  Which is apparently why debt collectors want to make it so they can bring lawsuits, but customers can’t. Collection agencies bring thousands and thousands of collection cases before the courts every year, many of them with little to no supporting information.

  A number of these cases are won because the alleged debtor — who many not even know they are being sued — never musters a defense or even shows up.

  If a group of wronged consumers were able to bring a class action in court against the agency, they could combine their resources — reducing the legal costs for each member of the class — and be awarded significant damages.

  In arbitration, each plaintiff’s case is heard separately. While each individual consumer is effectively starting from scratch, the company has the advantage of knowing exactly what the claims will be, because it has been through the same material with other arbitrations.

  And unlike jury trials, where punitive damages can be used to hold companies accountable and discourage them from further bad acts, damages in arbitration are frequently very limited.

  As a result of the complicated, high-cost, low-reward setup for binding arbitration, very few customers even pursue this avenue for redress. While the Maryland man mentioned above had reason to believe that there were hundreds of similarly wronged victims in his case, the Times found that the debt collector in this case — a subsidiary of one of the country’s largest firms — has only gone to arbitration in Maryland a total of 38 times over a five-year period.

  The Consumer Financial Protection recently announced that it has begun drafting rules aimed at reining in the use of arbitration clauses by banks and other creditors. Some members of Congress — urged on by bank lobbyists — attempted to scuttle these rules by adding a rider to the federal spending bill that would require the CFPB to invest additional time and money in researching a topic it had already spent three years looking into. That effort fell short, but you can expect further legislative attempts to block the CFPB from drafting and enforcing these rules.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uSouthwest Airlines To Pay $2.8M To Settle FAA Lawsuit Over Improper Repairsr

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  More than a year after the U.S. government sued Southwest Airlines over allegedly improper repairs to more than a dozen aircraft, the airline has agreed to settle the allegations to the tune of $2.8 million. 

  The Department of Justice on Monday announced that the Federal Aviation Administration settled a lawsuit filed in Nov. 2014 alleging that Southwest did not properly oversee a contractor hired to complete fuselage repairs on dozens of planes.

  According to the FAA’s suit, from 2006 to 2009 Southwest used 44 Boeing 737 planes that had undergone improper fuselage repairs.

  The contractor hired by Southwest – Aviation Technical Services – allegedly failed to follow required procedures regarding the placement of the airplanes on jacks and stabilizing them while replacing the fuselage skins on the aircraft. By not following the proper protocol, the airframe could shift and lead to problems with the new skin.

  The FAA claims it alerted Southwest of the issues in April 2009, but the airline continued to use the planes for at least six months before completing additional repairs.

  In a second incident, the contractor applied sealant beneath the new skin panels but failed to install fasteners to all the rivet holes while the sealant was effective. The omission could have resulted in gaps between the skin and the plane’s surface which could let moisture inside leading to corrosion.

  Additionally, the FAA alleged in the suit that Southwest failed to properly install a ground wire on water drain masts on two of its aircraft as required by the FAA Airworthiness Directive regarding lightning strikes. The airplanes were each operated on more than 20 passenger flights after Southwest Airlines became aware of the discrepancies but before the airline corrected the problem.

  Under the settlement, Southwest will pay $2.8 million in penalties, and has agreed to pay up to $5.5 million in deferred penalties if it does not implement operational changes, such as enhancing oversight and control of third-party maintenance contractors.

  A spokesperson for Southwest tells the Associated Press that the company is “committed to meeting or exceeding all applicable FAA regulations.”

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist