Hear Us Now

Monday, June 18, 2012 Consumer, privacy, health, child groups: Facebook space for preteens must protect privacy, be ad-free and marketing-freeWASHINGTON – In a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a coalition of consumer, privacy, health and child advocacy groups called on the company to provide strong privacy and marketing safeguards for children if it proceeds Continue Reading

Categories: Internet
Tags: Facebook, High Speed Internet, Online Privacy

Do you understand what all those ads about “4G” wireless service actually mean in terms of how quickly you can actually download a video or cruise around the Internet? Of course you don’t. Neither do we. But under newly-proposed legislation in Congress, retailers and wireless providers would be required by law to provide consumers more complete Continue Reading

Categories: Internet
Tags: Consumer, High Speed Internet, Internet, ISP, wireless

HearUsNow.org is heading up to Boston this weekend and will be live blogging from the 2011 National Conference for Media Reform. If you can’t be there, we hope you will follow the action on our blog. We will be focusing on a panel we are co-sponsoring on Saturday morning titled “Mobile Voices, Mobile Justice: A Continue Reading

Categories: Cable & Satellite, Internet, Phone, TV & Radio, Uncategorized
Tags: Broadband, competition, Consumer, Digital Divide, early termination fees, Federal Communications Commission, High Speed Internet, Internet, ISP, Network Neutrality, wireless

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2011 – Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, sent a letter to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson on Tuesday, urging the telecommunications company to reconsider a recently announced policy that would place data usage caps, as well as corresponding overage charges, on its DSL and U-Verse Internet access service.

Categories: Internet
Tags: AT&T, High Speed Internet, Internet, ISP, truth in billing

What is reclassification and what does it mean for consumers?

Categories: Internet
Tags: Broadband, competition, Consumer, Federal Communications Commission, Genachowski, High Speed Internet, Regulation

Earlier this week the government approved the super-sized deal allowing Comcast, which is already both the country’s largest cable television company and Internet service provider, to purchase control of NBC Universal and its huge stable of media properties. At Consumers Union, publisher of this blog, we made it clear that our first choice was for the Federal Communications Commission or the Department of Justice to reject this deal. Once it was clear the deal was going to be approved, we said the approval needed to include strong and enforceable conditions to help ensure Comcast would be firmly discouraged from engaging in anti-competitive, anti-consumer behavior.

Categories: Cable & Satellite, TV & Radio
Tags: Children's Programming, Comcast, Federal Communications Commission, High Speed Internet, NBC, Network Neutrality, Online Video

WASHINGTON, D.C, January 18, 2011 — As federal regulators today moved toward approval of Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal, Consumers Union (CU), the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, and Consumer Federation of America (CFA) said the approval is coming with some real strings attached. CU and CFA had expressed objections to combining the nation’s largest broadband and cable provider with one of the largest content owners, concerned that a combination this large could constrict competition and choice, and lead to higher cable and broadband prices for consumers.

Categories: Cable & Satellite, Internet, Phone, TV & Radio
Tags: Broadband, Cable Rates, Comcast, High Speed Internet, NBC

June 17, 2010, WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today voted to begin taking public comments on rules to govern broadband Internet connections. Joel Kelsey, policy analyst for Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, comments on the move.

Categories: Cable & Satellite, Internet
Tags: Broadband, competition, Federal Communications Commission, High Speed Internet

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about “bill shock,” the unpleasant experience of receiving a huge, unexpected bill from a wireless company. Now we have some new numbers from the FCC showing the true breadth of bill shock among American consumers. A new FCC survey has found that 30 million Americans – or one in six wireless phone users – have experienced a sharp and sudden increase in their monthly bill not caused by a change in their service plan.

Categories: Phone
Tags: Bill Shock, competition, early termination fees, High Speed Internet, truth in billing

Internet consumers lost big – really big – in a decision issued by an appeals court in Washington this week. In essence, the court ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to preserve the freedom of consumers to choose what websites to visit, or programs to download, without interference from big Internet service providers such as Comcast and Verizon. Unless it is reversed, the ruling appears to allow broadband providers to engage in a whole host of highly egregious anti-consumer activities – up to and including the blocking of lawful content, applications, and devices. And, according to the court, the FCC may not have the legal authority to stop any of it.

Categories: Internet
Tags: Comcast, Federal Communications Commission, High Speed Internet, Internet, Network Neutrality