Verizon has announced a deal with the city of Pittsburgh to begin rolling out FiOS services to city residents by the end of this summer.

This gives the city its first wired competitor to incumbent cable provider Comcast, whose franchise renewal is due at the end of this year.

Verizon FiOS will charge residents $47 per month for 250 standard definition channels plus local high definition channels, and $11 more for several dozen HD channels and more than a dozen sports networks.

Some suburban Pittsburgh customers can already access FiOS broadband products, as the company has wired parts of Banksville, Beechview, Bloomfield, Brookline, Carrick, East Hills, East Liberty, Friendship, Garfield, Highland Park, Homewood, Larimer, Lincoln-Lemington, Morningside, Overbrook, Point Breeze, Regent Square, Stanton Heights and Swisshelm Park.  Completing agreements to send video down the network to add a “cable TV” type service is expected to be a relatively simple process, according to Verizon officials.

WTAE Pittsburgh Reports on Verizon Agreement with the City of Pittsburgh

City residents can expect to see service available within the next six years, or the company will be subjected to fines by city officials.  But Verizon should have service available far earlier, starting with most of the North Side, some South Hills neighborhoods near suburbs, the business district downtown, and parts of Lawrenceville.

In return for a franchise agreement, Verizon will mimic Comcast’s agreement with the city, handing over 5% of gross revenue.  Verizon has also agreed to install dedicated fiber optic service between some city public safety buildings, $700,000 to upgrade the city’s video equipment, in part for local government proceedings, and 52 cents from each customer will be designated towards providing the viewer with public, educational, and local government channels.  A total of five channels will be reserved: two for government, one for public access, one for educational use, and a fifth reserved for the future.

More video on this story below.

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The price of providing lousy telephone and broadband Internet service in three New England states?  $2.8 million dollars in fines, and counting.

FairPoint Communications has been piling up fines and penalties for almost a year now, providing third world phone service with the competitive spirit of Hugo Chavez.  Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont officials started fining the company after it blasted FairPoint’s “failure to meet certain standards for quality and timeliness of interconnections.”  FairPoint is required by law to open its networks to local competitors, and the results of those trying to purchase access at wholesale rates have been about as acceptable as those residential customers have dealt with since Verizon threw them under the bus and left town more than a year ago.

The company’s response?  It wants Maine’s Public Utilities Commission, for one, to waive the $845,000 it owes to local phone carriers.  In a filing with the PUC, it asks that waiving or modifying the payments will let it return its focus to fixing faulty networks to normal operating levels.

In other words, it was penalized for not doing its job and promises, if the penalties go away, it will do its job.  What happens if the penalties don’t go away?

FairPoint’s plans for broadband expansion in its service area were called into question when the company announced it has the potential to go bankrupt if bondholders don’t agree to waive certain payment requirements.

"The biggest problem is to figure out what to do with all of the money."

Charter Communications President and CEO Neil Smit steered his company straight into bankruptcy, and still got paid double his salary he earned the year before.

Charter, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection March 27th in order to rid itself of a pesky $8 BILLION dollars in debt apparently is no reason Smit should not get a doubling of his salary, becoming the highest paid executive in St. Louis and walking home with briefcases stuffed with $7.4 million in salary, bonus, non-equity/”cash” incentives and other goodies and perks.

But this Money Party is just getting started for Smit and his pals at Charter.  In a convenient move just two weeks before the company ran crying for protection from big bad creditors, Charter established some new executive incentives designed to reward the same guy in charge of the company when it went bankrupt with up to a $6 million dollar bonus if he helps the company find its way off the courthouse steps and back into regular business.  But he also apparently deserves a bonus on top of his bonus — the company will also pay him an additional $2.5 million in annual performance bonuses if he manages to actually… do his job.

Those that will help him in that endeavor are also set to be richly rewarded.  The company hired Gregory Doody in May as “chief restructuring officer” for a bargain: just $60,000 A MONTH, or $720,000 a year.

Smit got paid a pretty penny for joining Charter in 2008 in the first place, before the crash and burn, as the St. Louis Business Journal reports:

On top of his $1.34 million salary, Smit’s updated employment contract in 2008 provided him with a $2 million signing bonus and about $1.2 million in retention bonus pay. He earned about $2.8 million through Charter’s performance-based bonus plan. Although equity awards were not included in calculating the Business Journal’s highest-paid list, they brought the book value of Smit’s total compensation package to nearly $15.4 million.

We at Stop the Cap! believe in public service and doing the right thing, so we’re offering our free advice to help Charter restructure itself out of bankruptcy: fire the guy who shepherded the company there in the first place.

Some additional details are emerging about the content partners and networks likely to participate in the joint Time Warner Cable-Comcast TV Everywhere (as long as you are a pay cable/telco video/satellite TV subscriber) partnership.

Turner Broadcasting (long since out of the control of Ted Turner, who was essentially escorted to the door years ago) is a key partner, which means TNT and TBS original series will be an essential part of the new service.  The network’s programming is already streamed to around 5,000 cable TV customers participating in a market trial.

Among the original shows the TNT and TBS networks air:

The Closer
Raising the Bar
Saving Grace
Leverage
My Boys
The Bill Engvall Show
Tyler Perry’s House of Payne

Also agreeing to participate in the venture: Rainbow Media, Scripps Networks and A&E Television Networks. That means you should also expect to see shows from these cable networks:

AMC
WE tv
The Independent Film Channel
Sundance Channel
HGTV
Food Network
DIY Network
Fine Living Network
Great American Country
A&E Network
History (Channel)
History International (Channel)
Bio (Channel)
Military History (Channel)
Crime & Investigation Network

The ultimate goal? To obliterate YouTube and Hulu TV as the most popular video websites in the United States.  Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, fully expects TV Everywhere to be the nation’s largest and most popular destination for online video.

Some technical notes about accessing the service from Multichannel News:

At first, Comcast’s On-Demand Online content will be available only to customers who subscribe to both cable TV and broadband services, over only a Comcast-provided Internet connection through a subscriber’s cable modem, and via only the Comcast.net or Fancast.com portals. The MSO chose to “authenticate down to the subscriber level” to ensure the service will have a higher level of security out of the gate, said Comcast senior vice president of new media Matt Strauss.

Whereas Comcast had intended to provide On-Demand Online to subscribers solely through its own Web sites over its own broadband networks, Time Warner’s TV Everywhere imagines a decentralized way to let consumers log in to any participating sites to access content, including those run by the content owners.

Now Comcast has agreed to eventually allow video subscribers to access Time Warner’s content via TNT.tv and TBS.com, over any broadband connection they choose, although the specific mechanism for doing this hasn’t been determined yet.

Sources say an elderly Vienna man is dead after falling down in a confrontation outside his home with a Verizon FiOS technician.

Police say 79-year-old Bill Cornelious was unhappy with the installation of a new service.

The Verizon employee left the home at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, and the elderly man followed him out and tried to block the technician’s van from leaving the driveway.

Vienna police say the man tried to reach inside the van and grab the steering wheel. It was then that he fell and suffered the injuries that caused his death. WJLA-TV reports on this tragedy which occurred in late June and was brought to our attention today:

It’s unfortunate that disputes over cable/television service can lead to these kinds of confrontations and tragic results.

Netflix, Apple, and Amazon — are you paying attention? This is your future, as your business plans go up in flames should Internet Overcharging schemes get a foothold in the United States.

Sky Television is New Zealand this week announced it was throwing in the towel on Sky Online, its broadband video on demand service for New Zealand.  It’s not that the service wasn’t popular and keenly sought by broadband customers in the country.

John Fellet, Sky New Zealand

Chief Executive John Fellet said the fault was entirely with broadband providers who annoyed customers with broadband usage caps.  In the end, “the service does not make sense in the current New Zealand broadband market.”

Subscribers got unlimited access to Sky Online for $5 a month, but they quickly learned the $5 charge was just the beginning.  Once customers consumed their paltry usage allowance, their speeds were dropped to dial-up for the rest of the month.

“It has not been a great viewer experience,” Fellet told The New Zealand Herald.

Fellet told the newspaper he thought these kinds of usage limits detracted from one of the primary selling points for broadband service in the first place — video content.

Fellet has fielded several customer complaint calls daily about the situation, something he considers the tip of the iceberg.

Until Sky can secure an arrangement to exempt usage caps from their video service, an unlikely proposition, the entire service will be put on hold.

The Herald provides an update on what other services are facing in the south Pacific:

Sky – which has invested heavily in online rights to its programmes – has not been alone in looking to open up the market.

Hybrid Television Services holds Australasian rights to TiVo, which has download capabilities and wants to offer an internet download service. Hybrid, one-third owned by TVNZ, has been talking to Kiwi telcos.

Sky launched its On Demand service this time last year, about 15 months after TVNZ had launched TVNZ ondemand.

Sky has been unable to make it work under a pay TV model. But TVNZ head of emerging markets Jason Paris says that TVNZ ondemand – funded through advertising attachments to programme downloads – has been profitable since March.

Unlike Sky, Paris insisted yesterday that TVNZ had received no complaints from viewers about breaching data caps.

TVNZ was the first broadcaster in Australasia to launch a full online catch-up service and nearly all of of its prime-time shows are available through this service. Each week nearly 250,000 New Zealanders stream 1.5 million shows to their homes, Paris says.

Some TVNZ traffic has been through a relationship with the state-owned ISP Orcon, which has allowed its subscribers to access the TVNZ ondemand website without affecting data caps.

Cable operators have been looking for a way to expand their broadband service to outside the home, and Comcast, Bright House, and Time Warner Cable have found their answer: WiMax technology from Clearwire.  They’ve joined Intel and Google as minority investors, collectively owning 25% of Clearwire, after investing more than $3 billion dollars in the wireless broadband service.  What do they get for the buy-in?  The chance to market Clearwire services to their cable broadband customers for “on-the-go” broadband.

Comcast High-Speed 2go Metro service launched Tuesday in Portland, Oregon providing consumers with portable speed up to 4Mbps in Clearwire’s own 4G network service area.  Comcast customers can sign up for a promotion for $49.95 a month for one year, which includes their wired cable modem service, a Wi-Fi router, and Clearwire wireless service (regular price after the promotion is $72.95 monthly).  Customers can access the service in any Clearwire 4G service area nationwide.  Where Clearwire doesn’t offer service, customers can “roam” on Sprint’s 3G data network nationwide for an additional $20 a month more.  There are no known usage limits at this time.  Existing Comcast broadband customers in Portland can add the Clearwire-based service starting at $30 a month.

The service will work for laptops, but not mobile data devices.  Comcast’s investment in Clearwire made such a venture possible, and is expected to compete with mobile phone broadband data plans, which typically offer 5GB of service for $50 a month.

Comcast will sell service in Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia by the end of 2009.

While the service will be useful for Comcast customers who travel or who want more reliable, fast wireless data access, Clearwire’s ability to serve as a true competitor to Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House may be compromised by those partnerships.

Could Clearwire effectively create promotions and plans that could lead to customers cutting the cord on their cable broadband provider?  Should cable companies increase their investments and ownership interest in Clearwire, would it ultimately matter to them where you obtained service?

The quest for fiber-based broadband service from consumers has reached the point where many have decided to accept or decline offers to purchase property in new housing developments based on whether they’ll have access to fiber or not.  Those were the findings in a study from the Fiber to the Home Council, which surveyed more than 600 existing fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) customers and 600 other broadband customers nationwide.

The results clearly show consumers love fiber optic broadband, far more than cable modems or DSL service from the phone company.

For example, 67% of FTTH users were very satisfied with their broadband speed compared to 58% of cable modem users and 46% of DSL users. A total of 70% of FTTH users were very satisfied with their Internet service up time compared to 64% of cable modem users and 55% of DSL users.

Consumers also reported that FTTH service was faster… much faster than competing technologies.  The median tested download speed from FTTH users was 10.4Mbps. FTTH tested download speed was 51% higher than cable modem service and 593% higher than DSL (DSL has abandoned the speed war, having lost that race to competing technologies, and now prevails only on price and where other alternatives are not available).

Upload speeds offered by FTTH users blew away the competition.  The average subscriber had 2.4Mbps of upload speed, which is 380% higher than cable modem users and 500% faster than DSL.

The survey also showed that robust competition, with at least one provider bringing true fiber to the home service to consumers, meant an average of six percent lower broadband bills.

Some cable and telephone industry executives downplay the lust for speed by consumers, claiming that most don’t understand the differences in speed, and don’t utilize services where speed matters most.  But the FTTH survey found entirely different results.  Not only are FTTH customers extremely loyal and happy with their service, they are reluctant to move to places that don’t offer it.

When asked to imagine purchasing a new home and given a list of five real estate development amenities, both current and non FTTH broadband users rated “Very high speed Internet from a direct fiber line” more important than other amenities such as green space/walking trails, 24 hour neighborhood patrol, a community pool, and a fitness center/club house. 69% of non FTTH users and 82% of current FTTH users said “Very high speed Internet” would be an important factor in buying a new home.

Even in this difficult economy, 49% of FTTH users said their broadband service would be the “last thing” they would give up.  Only 11% said it would be among the first things to go.

The demand is there, but the competition is not in many American communities.  Unless consumers reside in an area where an aggressive provider such as Verizon is willing to deploy fiber to the home, the chances of service arriving anytime in the near future is dismally low.  Few telephone companies are interested in deploying widespread fiber networks to consumers, and most cable operators believe their existing hybrid fiber/coaxial cable networks are “good enough” for consumers.  Only when a third player arrives in town, be it a private competitor or a municipally-owned fiber network, do telephone and cable providers get interested in performing their own fiber upgrades.

AT&T believes in its own copper-wire-based U-verse technology.  Smaller independent telephone companies are doing only limited experiments with fiber deployment, primarily to multiple dwelling units like apartment buildings and condos, and other uniform, expansive new housing developments.

Until prevailing attitudes among providers change, consumers hungering for fiber may simply have to pack up and relocate to the lucky communities that already have it, or will soon.

This represents another consumer victory, and comes thanks to the hard work of Free Press, which has been a strong advocate for creating robust, equitable access to broadband services throughout the United States, available to those in rural locations as well as economically disadvantaged inner city neighborhoods.  This assures that no grant applicant can take public tax dollars and build discriminatory networks that violate Net Neutrality.

The National Telecommunications Information Administration, along with the Rural Utilities Service, today unveiled grant guidelines for the $7.2 billion allocated for broadband deployment in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in February.

The criteria, or “Notice of Funds Availability,” create a detailed system for prioritizing grant applications and outline how the agencies will distribute $4.7 billion in broadband money for the NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and $2.5 billion for RUS loans and grants. Under the rules announced today for the BTOP programs, applicants that provide wholesale access to their networks at reasonable rates will be given preference for funds. Preference will also be given to networks that offer affordable services and community partnerships, among other public service goals. All recipients will have to operate their networks in a manner consistent with the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement as well as agree to “not favor any lawful Internet applications and content over others.”

In March, Free Press released a broadband stimulus grant scorecard that outlined criteria policymakers should use to score potential broadband deployment projects. Many of the factors identified by Free Press in March, such as Net Neutrality, broadband adoption, affordability, speed and job creation, are reflected in the criteria released today.

“Today, the Obama administration reaffirmed its commitment to Net Neutrality by ensuring that public funds will not be used to build closed and discriminatory networks,” said S. Derek Turner, research director for Free Press and author of the scorecard. “These broadband programs are first class examples of public policy serving the public interest. They will use public dollars to build out Internet access as a public service infrastructure.”

“To those large corporations that say public interest requirements are too restrictive, we say step aside and make way for the thousands of other companies, non-profits and municipalities that are eager to bring the transformative benefits of the open Internet to the millions of Americans left on the wrong side of the digital divide,” said Turner.

Along with the release of grant guidelines, leaders from the three federal agencies charged with collaborating and overseeing the national broadband plan were joined by Vice President Joe Biden in Erie, Pa., this morning to discuss funding. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and newly appointed FCC chair Julius Genachowski discussed broadband stimulus plans and the importance of providing high-speed Internet to rural America.

“These agencies have set the bar for our nation’s digital future,” said Turner. “The success of the national broadband plan hangs heavily on how these federal dollars are doled out and these guidelines will help ensure that funds are allocated in a fair and efficient manner consistent with the priorities set forth by Congress and the president.”

The RUS and NTIA will begin accepting applications and reviewing them over the coming months. The first round of grant awards are expected to be issued in December.