Sean Mountcastle

Good news from my local ISP, Cox Communications will be boosting their speeds in June.

Cox’s Preferred package, which is known as the company’s flagship product available across Fairfax County for under $40, will soon feature enhanced speeds of up to 5 Mbps per second download and 2 Mbps upload. The Preferred package is available to bundled customers (those who take video or telephone in addition to Internet) for $39.95 a month.

Cox’s Premier package customers will also receive a boost in speed. With the new speed enhancement, the service will offer customers speeds of up to 15 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream. The Premier package is available to bundled customers at a cost of $54.95 a month.

Looks like the competition is heating up while Verizon is still digging in my front lawn for their FiOS service.

Found via Brian’s Infinite Abyss.

Well, it looks like Qwest has upped its MCI offer to $30 a share, or $9.7B. I hope MCI responds quickly and this fiasco can all be over. I stated my position on this before so I won’t repeat myself.

It appears that Verizon has announced the limited availability of ‘Naked’ DSL (via Yahoo! News) in the Northeast. Unfortunately it is not clear from the story that this roll-out is only for existing Verizon customers who which to switch their phone service while keeping their Verizon DSL. But I guess it’s a good start.

Actually I’m still waiting for Verizon to notify me that FioS (FTTH) is available — it was mentioned in the local paper that this would take place during April.

Well, it looks like this sordid mess is finally over: MCI Accepts Revised Proposal From Verizon. Though I think that looking back on this it would’ve been much smarter for VZ to allow Qwest to buy MCI and simply wait to purchase the assets out of bankruptcy. I predict that this acquisition will not be accretive for VZ.

Will this madness never end? I’m sick of the fight over MCI already. MCI is right in my backyard and I’m sure there are a lot of good people working there, but the company is still in shambles. They lost $32M in the most recent quarter, Capellas doesn’t appear to have a compelling story for where MCI is headed and seems to want to wash his hands of the mess by cashing out. Though, I suppose if that were really the case, he’d take the Qwest offer since it’s materially higher.

I’m surprised that Qwest is still fighting for MCI, they obviously want the $5B cash which comes with the acquisition (I guess they’ll figure out some creative way of dealing with almost $5B in debt), but whoever ends up with MCI will be in for a real headache. Even MCI’s chief strategist acknowledges that they are running out of time.

I enjoyed Om’s comparison of Seidenberg and Notebaert to Grumpy Old Men, I think it’s apt. Though at least Lemmon and Matthau were fighting over Ann Margret, not some failing, non-prize of a company. The best thing for VZ and Q shareholders would be for both companies to walk away and leave MCIP to sort out its own problems.