Category: Local

That’s probably because you need to dial the area code today. I remember reading somewhere (don’t remember where — will see if I can find it when I get some free time) that US Cellular is requiring 10-digit dialing for local calls starting today (Unicel already does). Since our company has 15 lines with US Cellular, people are having a bit of issues adjusting.

So if you’re having trouble dialing a 7-digit (non area-code) local number here in Bend, try it with the 541 area code on the front. If it works, then you know you’re having the issue. You should probably just get in the habit of dialing 10 digits all the time anyway.

And I have to say, upon first glance, it looks much nicer than before and actually works on a widescreen setup. It has much larger photos, comments on the articles (only for subscribers, however, which is silly), There are still a few broken links here and there, and the stupid paywall is still in place, despite research that shows open archives get about 50% more traffic from Google than those with paid archives. And traffic generally equals revenue.

I haven’t had a chance to look through the entire site quite yet to see how or if other things have changed, but it’s far easier on the eyes than what was there before.

Quick glancing at the print edition this morning, it appears that they’ve introduced some new design elements to the print edition as well which URL references for specific sections (not all of which work quite yet). But kudos to the online staff over there for putting out a much better design than before — now if you could just convince management to get rid of the damn paywall and allow non-subscribers to comment, than it’d be nicer.

If you haven’t been following the drama and the outcry surrounding BendBroadband’s latest pricing changes, let me sum up what’s been going on the last few weeks:

• BendBroadband announced they were going give you more speed, but they were going to cap the bandwidth. Needless to say, this caused quite the outrage, and that post now has 100 comments (and counting), many from BendBroadband representatives. Their response to the outcry was to create a new platinum plan with lower speed, but a higher cap. A calculation spreadsheet was also posted so folks could really see how expensive this could get. BendTel was also featured in the local paper, and made a few subtle jabs at BendBroadband.
• A couple weeks later, the story made national news with it hitting Gizmodo where it then hit the digg front page, as well as a bunch of other sites (you can digg my original post here).

It’s been a week or so since this thing hit the wire on a larger scale, and my sources at BendBroadband say they are watching the conversations here and are listening. They will not say, however, if anything will change, but they are listening (still waiting for the new business plans to come out, folks).

One of my original gripes (one that was putting my bandwidth consumption over the edge of some of the tiers) was that middle-of-the-night consumption shouldn’t count the same. But something that was pointed out to me privately was a point I didn’t think of that makes a bit of sense: The Net Neutrality advocates say that it’s basically an all-or-nothing thing when it comes to bandwidth counting — you can’t consider nighttime data from daytime data (even though that’s what the power company does). So you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

A couple protest sites have been created since this all started brewing. One is FixBBB.com, which has been trying to organize a public protest and get more media attention to this cap. They also make a suggestion as to who you can switch to, but I’d recommend avoiding Clearwire and use somebody like Yellowknife or Webformix instead if you’re looking for wireless rural Internet. BendTel also provides DSL, but primarily to Business customers.

Another protest site has hit the wire, being run off a BendBroadband home connection (which is bound to push usage up a bit, considering the site’s received a few diggs). According to the site, the guy had 214GB of data transfer last month and 15GB between April 10 and 15. Even if he was on the platinum plan, he’d owe nearly $240 last month.

Since I don’t have the foggiest idea if BendBroadband will shut his site down for terms-of-service violations, here’s the screenshot off his site:

So it all comes down to this: Knowing what you know, if you’re using a BendBroadband connection, what are your plans? Are you moving or are you staying? If you’re moving, where to? I’m still exploring my options, and will reveal my decision at a later date, but I wanted to see what everybody else was doing as well.

Update on 4/17: Welcome Bulletin readers. All the relevant posts with all the discussions are linked above. I haven’t had time to read the article yet, but will comment here when I have a chance to do so.

Quite the discussion has come about from BendBroadband’s annoucement that they’re going to start capping bandwidth on residential plans (no word on their plans for their business plans, which really should have been released concurrently). The entry has 59 comments (and counting), and the news has now hit the stupidly-popular Gizmodo: The Future Of Broadband: We’re Totally Screwed.

Commenters there say that they’ve got it worse (I haven’t had a chance to read through all the comments there), but really, you could say that with anything — life is always worse somewhere.

BendBroadband is getting less-than-terrific press about this, and maybe that will cause them to change their mind — or at least open it.

I say we all have a little informal contest: Who has the highest usage graph during a single billing period? How high has anybody gotten? (Update: Let’s not try to kill BendBroadband here. I wasn’t trying to encourage people to download as much as they possibly could just for the sake of downloading. Besides, it’d probably be hard to beat this guy.)

Thanks Mark for the tip.

Update on 4/10: That Gizmodo post is now on (at least) 14 other sites (and I just got word about this site as well.

Update again…: Now it’s on the front page of Digg… . Feel free to digg my original article (there’s a digg link right below the date/time stamp) so that folks can hear the local discussion about this and not just Gizmodo and Digg’s take.

Here’s a button that will digg the original post and the 60+ comments on this site:

“Bend Oregon: Home of the Pregnant Man” T-shirt:

The t-shirts are being done by Flash Ink, a local screen printing company. They’re going to go on sale on Wednesday, are $15, and are available by calling (541) 408-1308 or via email at rogerprints {at} yahoo {dot} com (they don’t have a retail shop or Web site yet — they’re working on it). Mention that you saw the shirt here.

And if you haven’t heard of the pregnant “man”, read on here and here. I haven’t really been following the story (because, really, in my opinion, it’s not a story), but the discussion on those two posts have been interesting.

Update: I’ve also been told they’ll be selling them at Lucky’s Tattoo and Body Piercing (by Red Carpet).