Despite hundreds of consumer complaints from residents in and around Baton Rouge, the Louisiana Public Service Commission has refused to vote itself the authority to threaten AT&T with a fine up to $175,000 for poor service.

Ignoring an agreement by AT&T to adhere to minimum service standards in return for permission to acquire BellSouth Corporation in 2006, the Commission oddly decided not to enforce those conditions for the protection of AT&T customers.  On Wednesday, in a 3-2 vote, the PSC instead decided to “study” the matter and to further consider whether or not it should impose the same minimum service standards on all of Louisiana’s phone companies.

Commissioner Foster Campbell, of Bossier Parish in northern Louisiana, was stunned by the vote’s results.

“You’re telling AT&T that no matter what they do, no matter how bad their service, we’re not going to do anything?” he asked.

Campbell told his fellow Commissioners he’s worn out after taking large numbers of calls from upset residents in northern Louisiana.

Field also voted for the measure. He serves District 2 in southern-central Louisiana

This is the second time the PSC refused to fine AT&T and instead “study” the matter.  Meanwhile, customer complaints from the Baton Rouge area continue to pour into the PSC offices.

Commissioner Jimmy Field, who represents the Baton Rouge area, told AP his office had been swarmed with consumers complaining about the length of time to get service installed and outages lasting more than 24 hours. Field wanted the PSC to hang the fine over AT&T’s head again.

Complaints against AT&T in Louisiana also involve lengthy waits for repair call appointments, delays in getting new lines installed, missed appointments, and extended service outages.

In just four months last summer, the Commission confirmed 435 of the 778 complaints lodged across the state against AT&T.

Apparently if the problems don’t impact the residents you represent, there isn’t a problem.

The three commissioners that voted against the proposal to potentially fine AT&T said as much.

Skrmetta was the ringleader of the three opposed to potentially fining AT&T. He serves District 1 in east Louisiana

PSC Commissioners Eric Skrmetta, of Metairie, Lambert Boissiere III, of New Orleans, and Clyde Holloway, of Forest Hill said it wasn’t fair to single out just one company.

Skrmetta went further and said he hadn’t seen many complaints in his district, north of Lake Pontchartrain.  But he had received complaints about some of AT&T’s competitors.

Boissiere voted against the measure. He represents District 3 in central Louisiana

Boissiere, despite voting against the proposal, delivered a verbal spanking to the AT&T representative on hand.

“I don’t like your methods. I don’t like your style. I understand where my fellow commissioners are coming from,” Boissiere said.

Debbie Canale, the executive director for regulation for AT&T Louisiana, wasn’t much impressed with Boissiere’s comments.

“Our customers vote with their money and would do business with competitors, if they were unhappy with AT&T,” Canale offered.

Our Take

The three commissioners who voted against giving themselves the power to make their regulatory authority count don’t belong on any Public Service Commission.  Any member of a review board should be concerned first and foremost with the interests of the residents they represent.  The three Louisiana commissioners who voted against the proposal failed to do that.  They should be removed immediately.

The only way to impress telecommunications companies under your review is to have the power to make them pay attention to your rulings.  Stiff fines for repeated violations (and 435 in just four months is an incredible number) will make any company sit up, take notice and fix problems.

Without it, verbal scoldings are little more than lip service to a provider that can afford to be arrogant, especially in rural Louisiana where competitive choice is hardly bountiful.

Canale’s response to the Commission boils down to, “if you don’t like our service, leave.”  If only every Louisiana resident could choose another landline provider if they wanted.

Holloway, the third "no" vote, represents District 4 in western Louisiana

Ignoring a company’s problems in one region of the state virtually guarantees those problems will eventually visit another.  It is short-sighted and inexcusable to ignore hundreds of valid complaints,  condemning residents to more of the same in the future.  Voting (for a second time) to “study” the issue is an insult to residents and little more than a stall tactic.

The Commission’s suggestion it wants to impose regulatory fairness comes despite a clear agreement, less than four years old, that AT&T signed onto as part of its buyout of BellSouth.  It says AT&T will commit to certain standards of service in return for regulatory approval of the merger.  AT&T already sought to renege on that agreement in mid-2009 when it asked the Commission to suspend fines as part of their “study” about regulatory policies across the state.

So much for that hard-fought consumer protection deal.  Evidently, what AT&T agrees to one year is fodder for their lobbyists the next.  If AT&T wants changes, can consumers demand some changes of their own that assure this company will provide quality service?

As usual, AT&T’s regulatory affairs never give consumers a good deal.  For 435 residents of Louisiana, it also gave them no dial tone and a lengthy wait to get it back.

At for Commissioners Skrmetta, Boissiere and Holloway, the only question that should be on the table is whether they represent residents or AT&T Louisiana.

That is something worthy of careful study.

Louisiana's Public Service Commission is made up of five commissioners, each with their own district to represent.

A column this week in The Post-Standard falls into the trap of believing usage caps on wired broadband service represent “fairness.”

Al Fasoldt, who writes a technology column for the Syracuse, N.Y. newspaper, told readers they should investigate buying and/or using usage measurement tools in order to protect themselves from a surprising bill at the end of the month.

Caps can make their service fairer to all customers by blocking excessive downloads that clog the network, and those who exceed their caps can be charged a great deal extra for service. This amounts to free money for ISPs.

But there is something counterintuitive about promoting new ways to get entertainment on the Internet — by using Hulu, for example, to stream TV shows to your home computer — while telling customers they can’t use more than a certain amount of data.

[...]

What’s needed is a simple way to measure how much data you use per month. Cable providers sometimes provide a Web page that logs each customer’s transfer totals — call your ISP to find out if your plan has such a feature — but you can easily track usage yourself with data-usage software utilities.

Time Warner Cable headquarters in Rochester, N.Y.

Fasoldt assumes facts not in evidence.  Simply put, there is nothing fair about usage caps, particularly on wired broadband service.  Fasoldt can be partly excused for making the assumption because he lives in Syracuse, where Verizon FiOS and Time Warner Cable compete heavily for customers in the Salt City.  Veterans of actual Internet Overcharging experiments, and those who live under usage caps and usage-based billing can testify about the true implications of such schemes.

They are nothing short of rationing broadband service for fatter profits.

In Rochester, where Fasoldt notes customers successfully fought off Time Warner’s experiment, customers do not have the luxury of two closely-matched competitors.  They have the cable company and a telephone company that stubbornly clings to its own 5 GB usage allowance in its terms and conditions, albeit presently unenforced.  Where competition is at bay, higher prices for limited service are in play.

At least Fasoldt admits it’s also about the money.

There is nothing counter-intuitive about promoting online video services and then slapping usage caps on them when you realize it’s really ALL about the money and not about “fairness.”  Limiting video consumption is critical to protecting cable television packages.  If you can watch it all online, why keep paying for cable-TV?  With a usage cap, there are no worries about that ever happening.

As this website has repeatedly documented, consumers do not need to invest in usage measurement tools that are a nuisance to install and monitor.  They just need a broadband provider that can be happy living off the billions in profits already earned from today’s unlimited broadband service without greedily trying to overcharge consumers even higher pricing for limited service in the future.

Fasoldt would do better by his readers telling them to follow the example of communities who have been exposed to such schemes.  They got involved, threatened to cancel service, and created a sufficiently large enough headache for providers who eventually determined, for now, it just wasn’t worth alienating customers with unwanted pricing schemes.

Time Warner Cable is offering mobile phone providers a solution to their clogged wireless networks — clog ours instead!

Business Week notes the cable company has been aggressively pitching its broadband network to cell phone companies in New York City, which can be used to transport cell phone calls and mobile data between cell towers and the providers’ operations centers.  The “backhaul” network cell phone companies rely on to move calls and data between the cell tower nearest you and your provider’s distribution network is often the source of the worst bottlenecks, especially when those networks are connected by standard copper telephone wiring, as many still are.

The more customers sharing a low capacity copper line, the slower your data speeds and greater the chance for dropped calls.  Although some providers have expanded their fiber capacity to reach busy cell towers, many more are still stuck with copper… until now.

Time Warner Cable’s offer to offload clogged cell phone networks onto the cable company’s broadband backbone has become extraordinarily profitable to the nation’s second largest cable operator.

In fact, it has become Time Warner Cable’s fastest-growing business after revenue tripled last year, Craig Collins, senior vice president of business services told Business Week.

We are talking $3.6 billion dollars in revenue in 2012 from wireless carriers alone, according to researcher GeoResults, Inc.

“Backhaul is a growth play that we are pursuing aggressively,” Collins said. “These mobile players want to get the bandwidth they need at a cost-effective price and our structure allows them to get that pretty seamlessly.”

U.S. smartphone use has grown almost 700 percent in four years, according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Mobile-data volume is more than doubling annually as people use devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Inc.’s new Nexus One to send photos, watch videos and surf the Web. When networks jam, consumers face dropped calls and may find they can’t access Web pages or TV, analysts said.

The coming "exaflood" doesn't seem to worry Time Warner Cable, except when profits from consumers are at stake

Apparently the “exaflood” scare theory that suggests broadband networks are becoming hopelessly clogged does not apply to Time Warner Cable, because the company easily found plenty of free bandwidth in metropolitan New York City to profit from wireless phone traffic.

Not to be outdone, Comcast expects $1 billion from the wireless backhaul gravy train over time, according to its February 3rd conference call with investors.  Comcast is in a unique position to help ease congestion in San Francisco, where the cable operator provides service to some of the same customers who wander the city with Apple iPhones on AT&T’s overclogged Bay Area network.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt doesn’t want to limit the potential revenue to just the wireless big boys — he wants to offer service to carriers large and small:

While Time Warner Cable declined to specify if AT&T, the lone U.S. carrier for the iPhone, is a customer, the New York- based cable company says it wants to sign carriers large and small. Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt alluded to AT&T’s extra iPhone traffic in a December conference call.

“They want to get that into a cable as fast as they can,” Britt said, referring to overloads. His company began leasing backhaul in 2008 and posted $26 million in sales last year, less than 1 percent of the company’s total sales. Collins declined to give a forecast for 2010.

All this, of course, comes ironically to those Time Warner Cable customers who were subjected to Internet Overcharging experiments from Time Warner Cable just about one year ago.  Apparently, the exaflood only applies to consumers who face enormous broadband pricing increases and/or usage limits because of “overburdened” broadband networks.

Not so overburdened that the company can’t make room for billions in new earnings from cell phone companies, of course.

[Video Fixed!] Craig Moffett discusses wireless smartphone data usage trends and Time Warner Cable’s involvement in transporting mobile phone and data across its cable broadband network (5 minutes)

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) is expected to resign his seat Monday

Rep. Eric Massa (D-New York), author of the Broadband Internet Fairness Act (HR 2902) — legislation that would ban Internet Overcharging, announced he will resign his office Monday.

In a fast-moving series of events, Massa first announced he would not seek re-election because of health reasons — the congressman faces a renewed battle with cancer, but allegations of ethical violations also surfaced earlier this week which have gotten national news coverage.

Massa is a first term congressman in New York’s 29th Congressional district, which has traditionally elected Republican candidates to office.  But as the national Republican party has trended further to the right, northeastern Republicans have become an endangered species in Congress.  Former Rep. Randy Kuhl only held onto the seat for two terms before being defeated by Massa in 2008.  Kuhl himself replaced retired congressman Amo Houghton, a long-serving moderate Republican whose voting record often split with the national Republican party on major issues.

Massa’s decision not to run for re-election surprised voters in his district, which runs from suburban Rochester to the Pennsylvania border along the southern tier.  Friday’s sudden announcement he’ll also resign his office effective Monday shocked voters and started a scramble for who might assume Massa’s seat upon his resignation.

The loss of Eric Massa to the Stop the Cap! cause is a concern for broadband consumers.  Massa stepped up to protect consumers from an Internet Overcharging experiment proposed last April by Time Warner Cable, which serves most of his district.  Massa immediately blasted the cable company’s plan to test usage-based billing on residential customers in the Rochester area, which is the only major city in New York State not served by Verizon and its expanding fiber to the home FiOS system.

Massa’s proposed legislation would have banned such schemes unless a company could demonstrate a clear financial need to adopt consumption billing and usage limits.

Thankfully, New York senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) remains in office, and is the only senator to protest Time Warner Cable’s experiment, and helped end it, not just for residents of western New York, but for residents of Texas and North Carolina as well.

As to the swirling of allegations surrounding Massa, I have no interest in expanding on them here.  You can get a detailed review of the congressman’s views on these issues by listening to a 90-minute radio show aired today on a WKPQ-FM in Hornell, New York.  Today’s show will probably break news because Massa expands in great detail what’s behind the allegations and the reasons for his retirement.

Eric Massa’s regular Sunday show on WKPQ-FM Hornell, NY today discussed his decision to resign his office in great detail. (90 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

As for his replacement, a number of Democrats from both the southern tier and Monroe County/Rochester are considering entering the race.  Massa’s already-campaigning Republican opponent, former Corning Mayor Tom Reed remains in the race.  The Republican county supervisor for Monroe County, Maggie Brooks, is also considering a run.  But so is the former Congressman Randy Kuhl.  “Randy the Dandy” would be the worst possible option.  His undistinguished record and contempt for his constituents makes my skin crawl.  In his last term, Kuhl refused to hold open town hall meetings, instead shepherding constituents in for ‘five minutes with Randy’ where someone took notes and another escorted you out when your time was up.  Nobody should have bothered to take notes — his ongoing lack of concern about what voters in his district thought helped him lose his seat in the first place.  His lack-of-listening tour would fit perfectly with certain cable companies who don’t listen to their customers.  Hopefully, voters will not contemplate a return of Randy Kuhl.  Four years was more than enough.

We’ll be looking for other members of Congress to take up where Eric Massa left off.  I would like to thank Congressman Massa for his hard work on behalf of our cause, as well as helping make a difference on so many other matters important to the voters in his district.  I wish him good health and best wishes.

Several television stations announced Rep. Massa’s decision to resign his office Friday in “breaking news” headlines.  This clip has three reports from WETM-TV Elmira, WHAM-TV Rochester, and WENY-TV Corning. (6 minutes)

Residents in the 29th congressional district react to Rep. Massa’s resignation announcement, and local politicians jockey for position to potentially run for Massa’s seat.  Three reports are included from WHAM-TV Rochester, WROC-TV Rochester, and WENY-TV Corning. (6 minutes)

Rogers Communications Monday began their latest Internet Overcharging scheme on Canadian broadband customers — they’ve doubled the maximum overlimit penalty from $25 to $50 for customers who exceed the cable company’s arbitrary broadband usage allowances.

It’s a fact of life for anyone living with a provider that wants to charge too much for broadband service.  Like the credit card industry, the tricks and traps keep on coming as providers seek to monetize everything they can to extract as much money from customers as possible.

For some providers like Bell, the trick is to gradually reduce your usage allowance, exposing more and more customers to overlimit fees (the company even sells an insurance plan to protect you from their audacious pricing).  For others, the fee trap comes from gradually increasing the maximum overlimit fee until there is no maximum.

Rogers has chosen the latter method, effectively passing through massive rate increases for Canadians that dare to use too much.

Originally, Rogers Extreme service was priced at $60 a month for 10/1 Mbps service with a 95 GB cap.  Customers who traditionally exceeded that paid $1.50 per gigabyte in overlimit fees.  With a $25 maximum penalty, many customers just accepted the fee as their ticket to unlimited broadband.  Now, Rogers has conceded a quarter to customers, lowering the per gigabyte penalty rate to $1.25.  But for customers who still regularly exceed their allowance, the charges really add up.  That $60 a month now balloons to $110 per month for exactly the same unlimited service customers used to enjoy for less.

That forces customers like the Globe & Mail’s Michael Snider to make some choices:

1. Reduce usage — a win for Rogers and broadband rationing for him;
2. Upgrade to a higher tier service plan to get a better allowance — a win for Rogers and a higher bill for Snider.  Extreme Plus has an allowance of 125 GB, just a 30 GB difference, for an additional $10 a month;
3. Grin and bear it — a win for Rogers and a future that guarantees him bigger bills indefinitely.

This is the type of move that may force customers who regularly approach or exceed their cap to seriously consider upgrading their service package.If that’s part of Rogers’ plan, it worked.

I just bumped up my service from Extreme to Extreme Plus (if you do the same, inquire about the promotion that offers $20 off Internet for the first six months if you lock in for a year — that’s upgrading only). So now, I’ll be getting 25-Mb download speeds (still a measly 1-Mb upload, though) and a cap of 125 GB a month and, once the promotion ends, will be paying $14 a month more ($10 for the service and $7 for the modem rather than $3).

Call me a sucker, but twice in the past year I have exceeded my 95 GB cap and paid an extra $25 on my bill — once after backing up several gigs on an online backup service and once after downloading a few movies on my Xbox.

But Snider also faces, by design, the one-two punch of Internet Overcharging schemes.  Not only do they fatten provider profits, they also discourage him from using his broadband service, fearing a higher bill.  Even better, they discourage cord-cutting — relying on your broadband service and dropping your cable-TV package.

I am discovering that I’m actually limiting my consumption of some totally legitimate services because I’ve no desire to pay extra on my Rogers bill at the end of the month.

Take for example Microsoft Xbox’s movie service. After waiting for what seemed eons for some kind of a legit movie download service, I finally have access to one that has a list of movies that I’d actually like to see, but it’s proving too expensive to really enjoy it regularly. Reason is, downloading an HD movie eats up more than 11 GB of my bandwidth — more than 10% of my monthly allotment (before I upgraded) for one freaking movie. That goes for games too. It seems as though distributors are leaning more and more to online delivery, but at 6 or 8 GB per game, again, that eats up a lot of bandwidth.

Being the gatekeeper for broadband distribution and also being a content distributor has its advantages.  If the competition starts getting too hot and heavy, locking down the distribution platform guarantees no competitor will ever get the best of you.

Whatever you do, don't turn off this modem, despite the fact you're paying for traffic it receives 24/7. Unplugging a cable modem could "damage it" according to Rogers.

Rogers claims its all about costs from increased broadband consumption, but one look at their pricing scheme proves that wrong.  Rogers reserves the biggest penalties of all for its lightest-use customers.  Those on Rogers Ultra-Lite tier suffer with barely-broadband speeds of 500/256 kbps with a usage limit of just 2 GB for a ridiculous $27.99 per month.  The penalty rate for customers who can hardly be described as “power users” is a whopping $5 per gigabyte.  They pay more because they impact the network more?  How does that work?

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the agency responsible for oversight of telecommunications services in Canada is no help.  They’ve become a de facto telecom industry trade association, rubber-stamping approval of whatever providers want.  The result is expensive, usage-limited, speed-throttled broadband service across the country.

What can you do to control your monthly broadband bill Rogers wants to raise?  Their advice is basically to use less of the broadband service you paid good money to get.  Oh, and despite the fact whenever your cable modem is powered on you are bombarded with constant traffic which eats into your allowance, whatever you do, don’t leave it unplugged — it will “damage it.”  From Rogers Internet FAQ:

We STRONGLY recommend that you do not turn off your modem when you are away from home. Your cable modem has been designed to remain powered at all times. Regularly turning it off and on may result in damage to your cable modem.

…and damage to our profits.

Oregon's telephone company service areas

Frontier Communications has won approval to assume control of telephone lines serving 310,000 Oregonians.

The Oregon Public Utilities Commission Friday unanimously approved the transfer of service from Verizon to Frontier as part of a 14-state transaction.

“First and foremost we want to ensure that customers are not harmed by this transaction.  That’s why we are requiring more than 50 conditions, all aimed at making sure customers are not harmed by this sale,” Chairman Lee Beyer said. “In addition, we are requiring Frontier Communications to spend $25 million on expanding high-speed internet access to its Oregon customers by July 2013.”

In return for approval, Frontier agreed to PUC demands for customer service protections:

• A commitment that Frontier spend at least $25 million to expand high-speed broadband in Oregon by July 2013;
• No changes in “commission-regulated” retail service plans for at least three years;
• Costs of the transition must not be paid by customers in the form of rate increases;
• 90-day window to change long distance carrier without any fees;
• An independent audit, paid for by Verizon, to ensure Frontier can handle service for those customers affected by the deal;
• An opt-out provision letting Oregon’s FiOS subscribers terminate their contracts without penalty if Frontier reduces Internet speeds or drops any of its television channels.

What is missing from Oregon’s agreement?

• A prohibition of Internet Overcharging schemes like Frontier’s 5 gigabyte “acceptable use” policy that potentially limits customer’s broadband use.  Expanded broadband that customers can only use for basic web browsing and e-mail, without fear of exceeding the limit, indefinitely punishes rural Oregonians with no broadband alternatives;
• A specific definition of what constitutes “broadband” speeds.  Frontier can continue to deliver the 1-3 Mbps it routinely provides to its less urban service areas.  While better than nothing, Oregon regulators could have used the deal as leverage to win 21st century broadband speeds from Frontier, not yesterday’s ‘barely broadband;’
• Fines and penalties that will punish a provider that does not invest appropriately in high service standards to provide quality service, and a trigger to permit automatic cancellation of operating certificates should Frontier go bankrupt.

Too many of these deals offer upsides for Wall Street and little benefit to consumers, especially those dependent on their landline phone company for basic communications services.  By forcing requirements that prove costly for a provider to renege on, investors will understand their gains will only happen when they are assured Frontier is doing right by their customers, as well as their shareholders.

Oregon is the sixth state to approve the sale.

Frontier currently serves only 12,000 customers in the state, mostly in southwest Oregon, including the communities of Azalea, Canyonville, Cave Junction, Days Creek, Glendale, Myrtle Creek, O’Brien, Riddle, Selma, and Wolf Creek.

The company’s new customers will come mostly from Washington County, east Multnomah County, and from several pockets of customers in the northwestern part of the state.  Oregon’s largest telephone provider is Qwest Communications, but the state has numerous smaller independent providers as well.

To listen to some executives cry on their quarterly conference calls about the struggles of the cable television industry during the economic downturn almost makes you want to weep for their misfortune, until you realize some of those voices are getting big salary hikes anyway.  For a select few, economic downturns are for the little people.  Nothing shall stand in the way of substantial salary raises and bonuses.  Don’t have the money to pay?  Just raise your rates!

Take Time Warner Cable’s Chief Operating Officer Landel Hobbs.  Many of y0u will remember him from last April’s controversial Internet Overcharging experiment.  Landel tried to convince consumers their rape and pillage broadband pricing was a good thing, and objections to it were simply a result of you misunderstanding how good of a deal it was.

Hobbs has an all-new employment agreement you can read for yourself.  Sonya Hubbard from footnoted, which reviews SEC filings, notes the company went out of its way to hand Hobbs a new contract a year before his current one expires:

The odd thing about Hobbs’ raise is that, according to the proxy filed April 20, 2009, his 2008 employment agreement wouldn’t have expired until January 31, 2011.  That agreement paid him a base salary of $900,000, an annual discretionary target bonus of 233% of his base salary (nearly $2.1 million), and a discretionary annual equity and other long-term incentive compensation award with a minimum target value of $3,000,000.

The new agreement took effect January 1, 2010 and has the same expiration date… January 31, 2011 as his former agreement.  But now Hobbs gets a minimum annual base salary of $1,000,000 and an annual long-term incentive compensation with a target value of $3,650,000.  The annual discretionary cash bonus remains at $2,100,000 (although now the number is specifically stated, rather than given as a percentage of his salary).

Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Robert Marcus also gets a new contract, after his old one expired in 2008 (he’s been getting a monthly extension ever since).  Hubbard reports:

The company had given Marcus raises, of course.  In addition to other types of compensation, as of last April Marcus’s base salary was $800,000, his annual discretionary target bonus was 175% of his base salary ($1.4 million), and his discretionary annual equity and other long-term incentive compensation award had a minimum target value of 225% of his base salary ($1,800,000).

The new agreement, which became effective January 1  and runs through December 31, 2012, states that Marcus will now get a minimum Base Salary of $900,000, an annual Target Bonus of $1,500,000, and an annual long-term incentive compensation with a target value of $3,100,000.

While executives surely appreciate a raise as much as the rest of us do, it’s probably a safe bet that investors and especially cable customers may be less enthusiastic about the new agreements.

At those prices, both can afford a lot of pay-per-view, but then, Time Warner Cable often provides free service to its higher level employees and management, so they’re insulated from those pesky rate hikes the rest of us pay year after year, too.

Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban has once again entered the debate over online video, Internet Overcharging schemes, and giant corporate mergers… and mangled it.

Cuban, who owns HD Net as well as the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, occasionally presents cable industry talking points on his blog, but quickly gets into trouble when he strays from them.

This time, Cuban is annoyed with Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) over remarks the senator made about the proposed Comcast-NBC merger.  Cuban seized on comments by Franken that Comcast should put all of its television programming online.  Doing that, Cuban insists, would lead to higher prices for broadband and usage caps on it.

Where has Cuban been?  I realize the man is too wealthy to worry about the relentless rate increases Comcast and other companies force on consumers every year, but he also forgot Comcast already has a usage cap on its service, even before the feared video tidal wave arrives.

I get that no one really cares if Comcast has to spend money on capital improvements to add bandwidth to the home.  They should. Its pretty damn stupid to push consumption in a direction that will raise internet rates  to receive the same content for which there is already a phenomenal digital network in place to deliver that content.

Think about it for a minute Senator Franken. Comcast, and every large TV Provider has a digital network in place that can and does deliver gigabits of tv content perfectly,  every second of every day, to any TV set in any  home that is connected to their network. It works. Well.  What you are asking Sen Franken, is that Comcast duplicate the delivery of theirs and NBCUniversals shows on a network, the internet,  that is not, and has never been designed to handle the delivery of huge volumes of video and tv shows.

Cuban should be arguing that point with the cable industry.  TV Everywhere, the online video platform that will offer consumers access to “hundreds of TV shows and cable programming,” is their invention.  If Cuban’s fears are correct, why would the nation’s largest cable operators launch such an ambitious online video platform?

Cuban has bought into industry propaganda justifying usage caps.  There is always an excuse for rationing broadband service to boost profits.  First it was file sharing, now it’s online video causing the “serious problem” of customers using broadband service for more than just e-mail and web browsing.  Their solution – monetize it.  Usage caps and usage based billing are about preserving high profits, not protecting or increasing network capacity.  TV Everywhere proves that.

Franken does not advocate usage caps, as Cuban suggests.  The senator simply wants to be certain Comcast cannot act as a gatekeeper, determining who gets access to Comcast-NBC programming, and who does not.

Cuban should be welcome to such measures as a victim of Gatekeeper Abuse himself.  Mark, how many subscribers did you lose nationwide when Time Warner Cable unilaterally pulled the plug on your channels?

A handful of large sized Internet Service Providers threaten to strangle Canada’s transition to a digital-ready economy.

The Globe & Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper, this week called out the country’s broadband conditions.  The country is falling behind, says the editorial, and without fast action to change things, “the innovations that could employ our future work force could well pass us by.”

One passage should puncture Canada’s complacency: “Canada … is often thought of as a very high performer, based on the most commonly used benchmark of penetration per 100 inhabitants. Because our analysis includes important measures on which Canada has had weaker outcomes – prices, speeds and 3G mobile broadband penetration … it shows up as quite a weak performer, overall.”

The newspaper was particularly critical of current providers, and the regulatory body that oversees them — the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).  Recent CRTC policies and rulings have allowed a handful of providers to place a strangehold on the Canadian broadband marketplace, reducing competition and controlling wholesale pricing and access policies.  Bell, Canada’s largest telecommunication company, was awarded approval of a policy to implement usage-based billing on the company’s wholesale accounts.  Many independent service providers obtain broadband access from wholesale accounts with Bell.  When they themselves face usage-billing, so shall customers, who now have fewer reasons to choose an alternative provider in the first place.

There is no magic recipe, but some prescriptions are worth heeding as Canada develops its Internet strategy. The report recommends open access policies, in which companies that build infrastructure for mobile and fixed broadband access are encouraged or required to lease that infrastructure to the competition.

But in Canada, limits on foreign ownership and inconsistent CRTC decisions have lowered the amount of competition needed to spur new and better offerings. There was less stimulus spending on projects to support more widespread Internet access in Canada than there was elsewhere. Decisions on related policy issues, such as copyright reform, have been delayed. A national conference on the digital economy generated buzz – ministers Tony Clement and James Moore are reputed to “get it” – but yielded few results. Our best hope to lead on Internet innovation, the Long-Term Evolution platform being developed by Nortel as a successor to 3G, is now largely in foreign hands.

The editorial provoked a response from Jay Innes, vice-president-public affairs, at Rogers Communications, one of Canada’s largest cable and wireless operators.  He sought to change the subject:

For Canada to win in a global digital economy, our country needs to establish a national vision that looks beyond the often-flawed statistical rankings of broadband infrastructure. What we need to understand is why so many Canadian households still don’t have computers, why Canada is lagging in scientific research, and how we should best promote the development of Canadian content and applications.

Internet providers called out for offering slow service at high prices routinely attack surveys that measure broadband speed as beside the point, and then just as quickly blame something else for their problems.

Innes fails to recognize that Canadian broadband service, speed, and access policies are directly on point when answering his question about the dearth of Canadian content and applications.  The fact is, with near-universal Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and usage-based billing, no innovative high bandwidth developer is going to plunge headfirst into the Canadian market.  When that developer realizes Canadian ISPs also have the right to artificially impede their content using “network management” speed-throttling techniques, they won’t even dip a toe in the water.

Canadian media websites, for example, contain dramatically less multimedia content for visitors to explore than their American counterparts.  Multimedia eats into your monthly usage allowance, so Canadians think twice before watching.  Hulu and other online video enterprises don’t bother to license content for Canada because usage limits and overlimit amounts discourage viewing.  Canadians who don’t want even higher telecommunications bills may simply decide the Internet is not for them, and they can get by without a computer.

If Innes wants to get in touch with his fellow Canadians, who are already well aware of his industry’s pricing and usage schemes, he can read Canadian bloggers like Éric St-Jean, who calls out Vidéotron and Bell:

It’s funny how we hear about Vidéotron’s Ultimate Speed 50 Mbps access, and now Bell’s Fibe 25 Mbps access and we’re told how great they are. They’re actually both humongous ripoffs, if you have even basic math skills and five minutes ahead of you. Why? They both advertise great speeds, but hidden behind those figures, in very small print, behind two or three clicks from the product pages, you’ll find abysmal monthly transfer caps. This means that, yes you have a very fast connection. But if you were to use it fully, you’d very quickly fall into a lot of debt.

Vidéotron’s transfer cap for their 50 Mbps service is at 100GB/month combined up/down – this means you will bust your cap within 5 *hours* if you were to fill your pipe. In turn, this means that you simply CANNOT reasonably use this service.  If you were to use your service fully – at 50Mbps – for the whole month, you would get a bill for $24,132.50. Granted, that’s a lot of data. But I just want to point out how ridiculous the terms of that offer are – it should not be legal.

Bell’s 25Mbps service has - get this – a 20GB transfer cap on it. They offer an extra 40GB for 5$/month. The base rate is $64.95/month (after 12 months).  The overage is charged at the whopping rate of $2.50/GB. So, if we take the base service + the extra 40GB, we’ll get to that limit within about 5.3 hours.

All I have is a 5Mbps (DSL) connection from Teksavvy. But for $43.95 I have no transfer cap at all, a fixed IP, and immediate access to support techs who’ll know what I’m talking about.  But they can’t offer more than 5Mbps.

I honestly don’t understand how the media isn’t picking up on Bell and Vidéotron’s tactics, and how this can be legal. To me it’s completely false advertising: they advertise great speeds (barely on par with the international market, though), which you can’t reasonably use. All this needs is a lawsuit.

When will we get decent Internet access in Canada?

That’s a question Innes is not prepared to answer because, for him and his provider friends, “decent” access is already here.

Innovation requires freedom to innovate.  Rationed broadband service guarantees “stick to the basics” thinking.  But as long as providers can live comfortably off the proceeds, why should they change the winning formula that provides them with financial success?

from Digg

Phillip "My Essay Would Never Get Accepted" Dampier

Wonder where Time Warner Cable is spending this year’s rate increase?  Look no further than Time Warner Cable’s all-new Research Program on Digital Communications.

For a 25-35 page essay on the topics that interest Time Warner Cable’s lobbying and Re-education campaigns, the cable operator will fork over a whopping $20,000 “stipend.”

Why?  They get to use an ostensibly “independent” researcher from a major university or non-profit group to promote their agenda with the veneer of credibility.  It’s not Time Warner Cable that suggests Internet Overcharging schemes are warranted — it’s this researcher guy from a respected university who said so.  Net Neutrality should be opposed not because we have a vested interest in doing so, but because this non-profit group catering to a minority or disadvantaged group says it will harm their members.

Copies of the “dollar-a-holler” essays get spread around Washington to influence public policymakers and other legislative movers and shakers, and inevitably become talking points in the public policy debate.  Long forgotten is who paid for them.

What kinds of questions does Time Warner Cable want answers to?

• How are broadband operators coping with the explosive growth in Internet traffic? Will proposed limits on network management practices impede innovation and threaten to undermine consumers’ enjoyment of the Internet?
• How can policymakers harmonize the objectives of preventing anticompetitive tactics and preserving flexibility to engage in beneficial forms of network management?
• Regarding these issues, describe a vision for the architecture of cable broadband networks that promotes and advances innovation for the future of digital communications.
• How might Internet regulations have an impact on underserved or disadvantaged populations?

See below for my exclusive tips and strategies to help would-be applicants succeed in getting their essay proposals approved!

Some companies have paid stipends to researchers to consider market trends, new product possibilities, and be on top of the next biggest thing.  This isn’t that.

This “research program” is being overseen by Fernando R. Laguarda, Vice President, External Affairs and Policy Counselor at Time Warner Cable.  Laguarda joined Time Warner Cable last April from Wiltshire & Grannis LLP, a boutique law firm involved in telecommunications policy strategies as part of its practice.  The firm describes, among its strengths, a “first-rate understanding of the law and policy with a keen understanding of the political and public relations forces that shape public policy battles to help fashion innovative, winning strategies.”

Time Warner Cable admits he’s there to help Time Warner re-educate lawmakers and the public about Time Warner Cable’s agenda.  From their press release announcing his hiring (underlined emphasis ours):

Laguarda will play a significant role in helping the company develop and advance its policy positions, and will assume primary responsibility for working with third party policy influencers, including think tanks, academics, public interest and inter-governmental groups, and diversity organizations.

“Fernando is an accomplished attorney who comes to Time Warner Cable with a unique mix of experiences and he will bring a fresh perspective to the many policy issues we will be addressing,” said Steven Teplitz, Senior Vice President, Government Relations, adding “he knows our business extremely well and will play an essential role in helping to advance Time Warner Cable’s advocacy agenda.”

Time Warner Cable is taking a page from Verizon and AT&T, who back research “think tanks” and have contributed heavily to organizations that suddenly declare a burning interest in their corporate policy agendas.  Take a look at Broadband for America’s member roster for a review of how that game is played.

Time Warner Cable customers are probably wondering why they are paying for this.  After all, $800 a page for essays that “will provide new information, insights, and practical advice” is mighty pricey.

Ordinary consumers are not invited to apply.  Had we, my essay proposal would have been, “Time Warner Cable Should Stop Wasting Customers’ Money on Bought-And-Paid-For Essays and Instead Use the Money to Upgrade Their Network.”  I was even planning on including some nice graphs and charts and stuff.

I would remind the nation’s second largest cable operator it earns billions from selling broadband.  Instead of blowing $20k-an-essay down a Washington public policy rathole, it could instead spend it on solving their burning network management issues with simple, cost-effective upgrades that deliver better service to customers.

Since I don’t qualify — I’m just a Time Warner Cable customer, what do I know, I’ll be a giver and not a taker and share free advice with would-be applicants.

1. Since Time Warner Cable doesn’t want a breakdown of your expenses or need to know what you are going to do with the $20k, you are going to spend most of your time and effort first learning what policy positions the cable company wants you to parrot in order to improve your chances of being a big winner.  Remember, Time Warner isn’t going to give you the whole 20k upfront.  According to their FAQ, one half of the award ($10,000) will be issued at the start of the project.  The second installment ($10,000) will be made only after your advocacy essay is delivered.  There’s a built-in incentive to tow the line.

2. You can’t write on just any topic.  You have to write about one of the company’s pre-selected topics, which is why I’m out of the running for this already.  If you’ve been paying attention to the policy debates about Internet Overcharging, Net Neutrality, and Network Management, you are already half-way there!  You know what side of the issue the cable company is on, so don’t blow your chances by saying things like “a free and open Internet should never discriminate against the traffic carried on it,” or “at a time when the broadband industry earns billions in revenue and recently increased rates for customers again, the idea of implementing usage limits or usage based billing would make Tony Soprano awe at its audaciousness.”

Polly wants a stipend

(Statements in green keep you in the running.  Statements in red will likely get your proposal introduced to the circular file.)

• Reputable equipment manufacturers predict Internet growth so great, it threatens a vast “exaflood” which could bring the Internet to its knees.  Without wise network management and traffic control measures, just like those used on any big roadway, a cataclysmic global traffic jam is inevitable.
• Network Neutrality should be a given for any provider because no company wants to make money by slowing down someone’s content.  That would be like extortion — pay us or we put the brakes on you.
• Network management techniques guarantee your call from grandma will be crystal-clear, your movie download from your cable-partnered movie service will always play worry-free, and by organizing online traffic, Internet chaos is reduced.
• There is nothing wrong with cable companies colluding with one another to preserve the industry’s flexibility to manage its own traffic, even if it means putting some questionable, independently-owned traffic at the back of the line.  Nobody wanted to view that anyway.
  
• Today’s cable broadband provider is investing billions of dollars to improve network capacity and deliver customers an unparalleled online experience.  The cable industry has pioneered innovation in cable network programming they own, operate and distribute to assure quality and excellence.  Now, by taking that same formula for success to online content, and cutting out unnecessary middlemen, the industry can do for broadband what it created for cable television.  Now that’s a win-win for everyone!
• Internet regulations have unintended consequences.  It means providers have to funnel large contributions to interest groups, or place a company employee on a group’s advisory board, so that the industry can rest assured that groups with an interest in maintaining valued contributions will advocate anything we ask, starting with “these regulations are bad for our groups and our members.”
• Unnecessary Internet regulations will create widespread depression and anxiety for investors.  That means money to expand broadband availability in underserved or unserved communities will dry up faster than the Mojave Desert.
• If the cable industry doesn’t get its way on this, it will punish consumers like the credit card industry did after “credit card reform.”  Word to the wise.