Cable TV Franchise Woes, part four

Clickford, Steven M.

So the story ended with me in October in regards to the Cable TV Franchise Agreement. The ball was in the Town of Merrimack’s court (or should I say the 7 member board?)

I had some change in my personal life which while I did monitor emails, several instances occurred between early October to Mid November.

And why should I need to follow up? Comcast’s appointed rep of municipalities and the Merrimack Town Council should’ve been crafting a final agreement. It shouldn’t be taking this amount of time. While ten years ago the technology and consumer tastes were different, if someone who has worked in this field for over a decade, they should know the ins and outs of the processes, and if they don’t they should turn to the New Hampshire Collation for Community Media for help.

This also was the first meeting that was recorded in HD since the cablecast is still in SD, but still heavily compressed.

While the discussion of eliminating the requirement of cable systems providing franchise fees, the overall sentiment was the town is dragging it’s feet. While the department head had said they received memos from 3 residents, it’s unsure if those individuals were notified about feedback or being in part of the Ad-Hoc committee for the Cable TV Franchise Agreement and also exploring the unregulated Internet franchising, and possibly improving the apparently deficient Merrimack TV operation. There has been no communication received by me from them as of this writing.

While my cable TV services that my family pays won’t be impacted per se, it’s not  good on leadership of our town government to stall negotiations with Comcast while it was known to me that it would be by this point the Town Council (of which is the government of Merrimack, NH again) would’ve had no more discussions and a contract would’ve been in place by the time January rolls along.

Our leaders are so insistent that “the consumer” will benefit from having “more choices”. While the resident in the red shirt said in the UK there is handful of long haul ISPs, and the consumers have more than a dozen “last mile” ISPs, England is different from New England. UK with the Brexit factor is a country of their own, and New Hampshire legally is not. It’s very apparent that locals here believe they live in a state of their own mind, a republic, a rebellious against the outsiders.  But the harsh reality is New Hampshire is a state in the U.S.A. and we have to conform to Federal regulations. The Internet was granted no-touch approach from the early 1990s with the idea the public Internet would just only be electronic libraries and in the mid 90s out of plain magic, the electronic libraries were sold off to become malls, a community center, and other profitable places that thankfully no real library had to deal with. And since the government treated the Internet as an “information system” this is the end result.

People forget IP is just a driver for machines talking to machines, that the “Internet” is well known by public opinion for humans to talk to one another on the World Wide Web, and that most “clouds” use the Internet port 80 that used to be a commonly used ports to access “web pages” that once was accessed by Netscape. If that was too much, in plain English, the “Internet” is this magical, non mythical world that can work without any problems that the “consumer” will benefit.

Good luck to that. I don’t think other ISPs want to come to New Hampshire. And misusing funds for Cable TV to wire up the town with fiber for IP based services will have the hurdles of fake NIMBY complaints similar to the Tennessee Pipeline Company (or Kinder Morgan) had to go through by the same town 3 years ago.

This is one heluvla story that has shown the failures of democracy, the lack of the constituents’    interest, their lack of awareness of their own town government and the town government’s negligence to be fit to handle a contract that is becoming more technical legally than it should begin with.

The story is not over yet.

*

Cable TV Franchise Woes, part three

Clickford, Steven M.

In early October, the following was submitted to the Town of Merrimack’s Media Services unit with the intention that this memo would become some form of public information, pursuant to RSA 91a, the Right to Know Law.

For the exercise of privacy, the address is withheld for this post.  The memo outlines things that would benefit the intelligence of the consumer, and should’ve got people in the position of power to question Comcast. Read on

Continue reading →

Cable TV Franchise Woes, part two

Clickford, Steven M.

Given the anger from the previous two meetings, one would’ve logically thought at least five angry men would come up and whine and bitch against Comcast. In fact no one came and spoke their minds!

…Except for one gentleman from another part of town who is apparently self employed and is “enthusiastic  in telecom” to only find his LinkedIn account at the time, the only “telecom” reference professionally was telephony at the help desk level. He said publicly he’s a “systems engineer that works at home” full time. This individual who identified himself as “consumer”  stood his ground that the cable TV franchise system was so broken he called the franchise fees  “a tax” not only that but pissed on the quality of the PEG programming. While it may be true, he  compared the PEG channels  to a mid 2000s TV series being shot on filmy DSLR. I thought the Betacam, SVHS and all the digital tape stuff was supposed to destroy the medium that made media fake in my opinion. (Conjecture at best on this topic…  Broadcast video grade at 60fps is the only medium I’ll support :))

He even suggested the programming should be reduced to a single channel for the “technically inclined” viewers. A bit snubby at best. He spoke and gave “ideas” (i.e. non-concrete, risky and not proven outcomes, and providing suggestions with very little knowledge on the subject.) He gave a bunch of talking points supporting his argument, and even had the audacity to attempt to make a followup comment after the hearing concluded!

Your’s truly came up next.

I am going to not talk about myself but relay what I learned in those questions that if I didn’t come up, the public would be left in the dark of the black smoke known as Democracy in Doubt.

  • The Town Council is the Franchising Authority of the Cable TV Franchise Agreement
  • Because the Town Council is the government of the Town of Merrimack, N.H. (noticed how I got lost?)
  • How the hell that 7 elected members can be a government and it’s legality – the video can speak for itself.
  • The Town Manager’s employer is the Merrimack Town Council. How does that look on a resume?
  • The Town of Merrimack’s executive management was apparently unaware that could serve as a mediator after consumers would contact Comcast prior. This has been an S.O.P. for years in other towns!
  • Accounts receivable to Merrimack meant Comcast had gave back money because of some interest involved.
  • I defended the Public Access, but not only that requested that it should be fully funded at the 5% max and suggested if they invested in themselves, the quality of content would improve, since social media is leading to Too Big to Fail Culture and now content creators must pay to play to get seen especially in the civilian content such as Facebook and YouTube (the meeting minutes erroneously stated Hulu which I didn’t say, as that platform doesn’t allow freelancers or independents a platform.)

The handouts also had some bad spelling referring to Harron Communications, spelled in the form of the big bird (Heron instead). I hate to be so obsessed about minor details, but if they don’t catch spelling errors, then what else is going in at the Town Hall?

At this point, the Town Council closed the public hearing. However, letters and emails could still be received by October 10th. The following day, the public notice on the town’s website disappeared, leaving a vague signal if missed the chance to speak even further?

It went through.

*

Dial-A-Phony: “bvoip”

Clickford, Steven M.2 Comments

The next installment of Dial a Phony that-would-be-a-Telephony, but since it rhymes with Melanie, I have to use the former as a title. Today’s focus is a company called “bvoip”. Gotta make sure the case is right for “stylistic” purposes…

This company’s web presence doesn’t really describe what they really offer of the “bloggy” site. (In comparison which this site and The Museum of Telephony  has 20x more static pages than what this company has called my site a “blog” for…)

Continue reading →

Stonewall – Missing my Netgear Firewall

Clickford, Steven M.

How my Netgear firewall became a piece of stone was I didn’t listen to the F.B.I. Being a native New Englander, the Feds have a reputation, especially in the Boston office for aiding and abetting in keeping Whitey Bulger, the notorious mobster to stay loose in Boston for a number of years. Whitey was in the news for years and years, till he got captured in 2011, found guilty virtually on all counts in 2013 to passing away the day before Halloween of this year.

Not that I don’t trust the Feds, but if the agency couldn’t keep a mobster off the streets, how should I take their intel that there was malware being transmitted over the Interwebz and to just restart the firewall to clear out the bad bug? When you hear the F.B.I., it is about the whereabouts of a Most Wanted person, not that there is malware, logically wouldn’t that be the responsibility of say Homeland Security? I did not take matters seriously, and didn’t take their warning seriously. And, it goes that I knew this device was End of Support later to be End of Life because Netgear decided to pull the plug on development in 2017, nearly a year after I acquired it new. Not only that I also was starting to try out other firewalls. As I didn’t take the threat seriously, I was left to these alternative firewalls, with the hope that I would use it for another year, giving me time to migrate.

Continue reading →

Dial-A-Phony – PhoneWire.com

Clickford, Steven M.

In today’s installment of people claiming to respect one of the oldest social mediums in the form not just being hip, but to peeve on it at the same time.

The Missouri company called PhoneWire.com is the offender. The Instagram account not only ripped content w/out consent from me, but also Joe from Chicago, behind the joetheucxguy.com site (or “blog”.)

Continue reading →

Dial-A-Phony

Clickford, Steven M.

Starting soon, since it’s a hip thing lately to shame people who do wrong things (such as lying about defunct companies or industries such as On Premise voice systems being the “end”) as part of the deficiency of the Internet, to CALL THEM OUT in a new feature called Dial a Phony.

Telephony does not work because it’s pronounced like Stephanie. We want to make sure that people are well aware of the proper phonetics.

Buy AMERICAN Commercial Software and Services!

Clickford, Steven M.

I’m writing this with a bit of a kicking myself in the balls for not learning this sooner.

I do not support non profit Open Source Software (OSS) anymore. For years, I have remained highly skeptical, and now I am fully against using any software that doesn’t pay taxes into our society. (I am not open to debating why not, and if anyone comments and attacks me personally, or even tries to threaten me, I will take your IP address and report it to your LOCAL authorities for criminal punishment.)

One of the things in 2018 that turned me away was how much consolidation in the Unified Communications front in OSS world. (Look at Freeswitch switching corporate sponsors and the infamous merger of Free PBX and Asterisk, which was the former’s offspring or “fork” in the coding world.) OSS touts themselves to be more open by having “peer reviewed” investigation of code. You mean “group think” right? What about accountability such as sustainability and looking at the long term? Oh wait, they are just as notorious as commercial software with a lifecycle.

Of course OSS today is the “freeware” or “shareware” of the new Millenium  , if you want more features, you have to pay for it right? OSS also stands for Free Open Source Software, but the reason why I stuck to OSS was you’re seeing a LOT more commercial support or free software that requires an unlock situation whether it’s a free community login or some key that will always keep free stuff to a minimum (VMware) or what have you.

So how is it any different than the commercial software?

I don’t see much differences especially when Microsoft’s visual looks, has looked cheap (err it looks like Linux some days); and given how the cloud has degraded the “power user” (thats-a-me) what difference does it make?

I am also sick and tired of the lectures that for profit companies are evil and they aren’t caring and they are solely making money. So what do you do, the FOSS programmer – live in your parent’s basement and not make any buck for a living? Nothing is ever “free”!

When you hear someone say “It’s free and open source”, it should be treated as an oxymoron because most “free and open source software” requires someone to compile the code to make the app work. Most often its a defensive mode by the open source community to keep “non technical” people out of using technology; a tactic known as calling “users” indirectly as  “computer illiterate people” a page out of the IBM tech playbook back in the 1950s.

I am also defending acquiring AMERICAN-based vendors. I got f—d over by a Canadian company called CounterPath earlier this year acquiring a SIP softphone app for my legacy workstations to find out after burning $90 that it needs to be on an active WAN to work and not only that the software is going EOL after May 2019 because of a certificate that is expiring. This was not publicized in March while the package was still available to purchase and they gave me a notice in May, after burning this amount of cash for 2 licenses, and the support tech was like “well we told you a couple of times”, NO I only got a stern notice in May. I shouldn’t be lied like that and should get the Windows 7 and greater app for free because of this technical-person-like emotional manipulation support tactic is so far from bait and switch.

I waited too long because I had a life where I just didn’t have the time to set it up. The site doesn’t explain how the licensing works, while I did research prior to. And by the time I confronted their technical support, my PayPal protection lapsed.

Make sure you buy American software, and commercial grade, not some degrading “free” and complex software that only geniuses can  figure out. Oh wait, they are in jail because they had raped children because only “technical people” do things that aren’t socially acceptable by law…

</rant>

Session Initiation Protocol – The Secrets, part two

Clickford, Steven M.

For the end user level, SIP telephones can do cool stuff that couldn’t be done on “office phones” prior to.

One for the first time since ISDN, office grade sets can interconnect without the expense of a large PBX  system. Some can work in Peer to Peer fashion.  BUT, don’t believe in this entirely just yet.

They work in basic modes when it’s off the H323 network, if the Avayas, the Mitels and the Ciscos have “dual modes”. You have to toggle this in it’s basic configuration. Continue reading →