[Update 1:34PM EDT: The problem was traced to a failure in the Northeast Regional Office in Syracuse, New York.  The outage impacted service from Maine to the east, Buffalo in the west.  Time Warner in Albany was quoted as saying the failure was "widespread."]

[Update 12:50PM EDT: Service is restored in Rochester.]

A major service outage has taken out Road Runner and Digital Phone services from Time Warner in the northeastern United States. In the New York area, the Road Runner outage extends throughout Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany, to name a few. The outage began at around 10:00am EDT.

Digital Phone is out in several areas as well, including in Rochester.

Time Warner does not know what is causing the problem, nor is there any estimate for service restoration.

As usual, the “Network Status” section on Road Runner’s home page shows nothing about an outage that has jammed local Time Warner phone lines with upset customers.

It’s 81 degrees in Rochester.  Finally decent weather.  One of the New York elected officials we’ve been talking to about the Time Warner usage cap issue somehow found out today is my birthday, and arranged to have a cake dropped off.  You’ll notice the caps stuck on all four sides.  Very funny.  It looks like a Wegmans cake.  Mmmmm….  You don’t know what a real supermarket is until you have a Wegmans in your town.  There is no other supermarket like it.  Period.  The next closest thing, and even that isn’t as good, might be a Whole Foods.  Wegmans is a Rochester-based institution.

Ars Technica is beginning to worry about us.

A number of Texans are writing in to report their Time Warner Internet service has also been cut off.  We’ve had more than a half dozen so far, and they are still coming in.  The pattern seems to be that if you exceed 40GB in one week, your account may be at risk.

When it is cut off, you have to hope you reach a knowledgeable representative who understands the flag that indicates your cable modem is “in quarantine.”  You then call the Security number, which is almost always answered by voicemail, and then wait for a call back and a lecture on your “excessive use.”  They then turn service back on.

I will be writing a follow-up piece on this problem shortly.  If you can continue to report instances of this, that is helpful.  If you are comfortable, please let me know if I can use your real name, which helps with giving this story added credibility.  It’s getting obvious these are not isolated incidents.  We’ll be seeking broader coverage on this and believe it needs some review by regulatory authorities.

I have received an informal response from someone “in the know” up here in western New York who tells me the home residential visits conducted up in the Rochester area are not unusual and started last fall.  Two people reported they were “prompted” by their complaints about the cap issue to Time Warner, because, as they wrote, the representative brought the issue up.  He’s concerned I’ve jumped to conclusions about why Time Warner does what it does.  Perhaps.  I’ll keep that in mind going forward.  I don’t mind getting the constructive criticism.

An upgrade has been completed to our comments section.  I will need to tinker with some settings, but you will have a window of time to re-edit your comments after posting them in case you find a spelling or grammar error after the fact.  The window will be set to 15 minutes later today.

I am still testing a different theme for StoptheCap! to help people find articles more readily.  You’ll know if/when I elect to use it when the site looks considerably different than it does now.

Inquiries have been arriving about my Frontier DSL service.  It’s complicated.  Very complicated.  It seems the original representative who processed the order completely and totally botched it, leading to layers and layers of confusion.  Follow-up calls to customer service representatives apparently resulted in additional confusion because the entire account was messed up.  Frontier has now assigned an account specialist who is now working with us on getting all of this resolved.  He seems to be doing a good job so far, but the jury is really still out on Frontier at the moment.  We are 10,000 feet out from the central office, and there is a line problem, so our service is currently speed capped to perform at around 256kbps down (and around the same up).  Obviously that’s ridiculous, but they wanted to leave us with something over the weekend.  On Monday, line technicians arrive to work on improving things.

The Rochester Frontier DSL speed for this particular area maxes out at around 6.5Mbps, but they are not currently certain they can do better than 1-2 Mbps in our neighborhood.  I am withholding judgment, because I know line technicians around here can get very creative in resolving issues, so I’ll wait and see what they can do.  But I definitely would not keep the service if 1-2Mbps was as good as it got.

It’s an illustration, again, of why DSL is not always a competitive solution in every instance.  The further away you live from the telephone company switching office, the slower the speeds get.  If you are in a rural area, there are lots of places that will never be able to get DSL because of how far away they are from the exchange.  Even in suburban locations, which is where I am, aging equipment and the quality of the copper lines can make or break DSL as a serious competitive contender for a lot of people.

I will be writing up and documenting the entire adventure for a future article.  I am impressed with Frontier assigning an account specialist to work with me on this and ensure my satisfaction to the best of their ability.  That has gone a long way to tempering my frustration over this entire affair.

I am going to enjoy the rest of my birthday.  I still have a ton of video to post here, and I’ve had good response from a lot of you that enjoy the fact we are multimedia-oriented, even if that eats into your “usage allowance.”  I’ve also had response from the media and some politicians.  The former seems to appreciate when I compliment good reporting (and two had a hearty laugh over the catastrophe in journalism on News 14 Carolina — they felt the same way); the latter appreciates they can sit back and watch condensed reports without having to read through all the text I am capable of producing in short periods of time.

And the folks at Ars Technica can relax.  I get out now and again, especially with the improving weather.  A few readers here have recognized me and honked as they realize I’m that power walking guy they’ve seen on Elmwood for the past several years.

Finally, I encountered a hackathon last night when browsing about online seeing who had linked to us.  I have been drafting rebuttals to two articles that link back to us, one coming from an industry insider who isn’t too plussed with our objection to Internet rationing plans, and another that, charitably, seems to be drinking the Kool-Aid, perhaps unintentionally.  We’ll see.

Wallstrip condenses the entire bandwidth capping is a bad idea argument down to a few irreverent minutes and this:

Pretty soon we’ll all be over our 40GB limit.

As I wrote earlier, this entire debate has barely budged in two years.  Wilson wants to run its municipal broadband service, and big cable and telco interests want to kill it if they can.  Two years after similar legislation died in the North Carolina legislature, the lobbyists and some co-opted state legislators are back for another round, trying to stop municipal broadband in its tracks with false statements about where these projects obtain funding.  The Wilson project, for example, was financed from a bond issue, with proceeds from subscription revenue going to repay bondholders.  No taxpayer funds are involved.  But cable lobbyists keep claiming otherwise, and also suggest they are being victimized by local governments.

The truth is, of course, the other way around.  Many smaller communities lack robust competition, and their citizens suffer for it.  System upgrades to bring additional speed at lower prices come to those areas where fierce competition exists.  Those stuck where competition is lacking or lackluster find upgrades slow in coming, if at all.  When a local government cannot convince companies to upgrade, they took it on themselves to get a better system up and running.  That can become a major selling point to attract new businesses, and keep residents on the cutting edge, usually at prices substantially lower than charged by incumbent providers.

Big corporate interests apparently cannot compete with better service and lower prices, so the next best thing is to find a politician willing to do your bidding to kill them off for you.  And as we’ve seen from Save NC Broadband’s reports, many of these legislators are so inept about comprehending the legislation they propose and support, they show their true colors when they simply defer to Time Warner’s own staff for speak for them!

Another great report from WRAL that tells the story.  The “cable guy” is back claiming tax dollars are involved here.  What in the world Rep. Ty Harrell is thinking is beyond me.  Also, can we stop with the metaphor of the TV showing a snowy picture?  We’re about ready to check into a deluxe suite in Hotel Cliché with that.

StoptheCap! reader Corey is back in touch this afternoon to say he just completed a phone call with a Level 3 Road Runner service technician in San Antonio.  He asked the technician what he knew about the caps.  Here is what Corey relays back to us:

He told me “as of our most recent meeting yesterday morning, we will be coming out with a meter to show people their actual usage and will be introducing the consumption based billing sometime in October with actual billing beginning in January.”

He also said the billing was required, “because we are coax based and not fiber optic, so we do have problems with people streaming high definition video and causing congestion in large residential areas, especially apartments and mobile homes.”

Now I have no idea whether these kinds of techs have this kind of information or not.  It might be true, it might not.  It sounds a bit like what the original “revised” plan was before last Thursday when Senator Schumer announced the whole thing was shelved for now.  But it would hardly surprise me if this was their actual intent.  I have no doubt that this fight isn’t over.  I also think it’s becoming obvious that the ‘listening tour’ company officials keep putting out there is window dressing.  As I told Senator Schumer’s office last week, I’m fully expecting that Time Warner will bring back the exact same nonsense all over again, except the summer of the gas gauge will be their attempt to placate customers about how much usage they have, if you believe their gauge and if your usage doesn’t fluctuate between the nicest weather of the year and the lousiest.

I will be working this issue behind the scenes next week.  If this is true, it isn’t exactly the consultation with the community the company was promising last week.  It’s just more of the same.  If you are in San Antonio, perhaps you can manage to land a discussion with another Tier 3 rep and get the same, or a different story, and report back in our comments section.

This is why we stay engaged in the fight, and why everyone else must as well.