Stop the Cap! » Bright House

Time Warner Cable and Bright House Say HBO/Max is a No-Go on Roku Box

Phillip Dampier — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:52:45 +0000

HBO NO GO on Time Warner Cable & Bright House Networks

While Bright House followed Time Warner Cable’s footsteps this week, introducing long-awaited access to HBO/Max GO for customers who subscribe to one or both premium movie channels, neither cable company is prepared to let you watch the online video service on every available device.

After Time Warner Cable introduced HBO GO, we found the service was not authorized to work on the Roku platform, and Time Warner Cable remains off the list of available providers. When Bright House Networks introduced the service this week, we quickly learned they do not support the Roku platform either.

We obtained nearly identical statements from HBO blaming the respective cable operators for this missed opportunity:

Bright House Networks [Time Warner Cable] is currently not supporting HBO GO on Roku. We encourage you to reach out to Bright House Networks [Time Warner Cable] and request that they add support for HBO GO on Roku.

Thank you,
The HBO GO Team

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Bright House Fires Up 2,000 Wi-Fi Hotspots For Customers Across Central Florida

Phillip Dampier — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:23:08 +0000

Bright House Networks Thursday switched on a huge network of free Wi-Fi hotspots for its broadband customers across central Florida. Concentrated on coastal beach communities in eastern Florida and in the cities of Orlando, Tampa, and St. Petersburg, the new Wi-Fi service can be found on beaches and parks, inside malls and shopping destinations, downtown business districts, and medical facilities across their Florida service area.

Bright House Networks Wi-Fi Coverage Map

Existing Bright House broadband customers can log in and use the service for free:

Most wireless devices will display available networks. If the device doesn’t show networks, open the network options and select My BrightHouse or Bright House Networks.
Open the Internet browser of your choice.
When the WiFi HotZones page opens, click ‘log in’ under Bright House Road Runner Customer.
Log in using Road Runner email and password or My Services credentials.
Agree to the terms of use and connect to the WiFi network.

Non-customers can purchase access with a credit card in increments of as little as three hours. Stop the Cap! readers in central Florida report speed test results of around 5/1Mbps from many of the Wi-Fi locations, which is much better than many other publicly available Wi-Fi networks.

Bright House says it has launched the Wi-Fi service to help customers hang on to their usage-limited mobile broadband allowances.

“We’re trying to save our customers money, time and energy,” Bright House spokesman Donald Forbes said. “Plus, Wi-Fi is so much faster and such a better connection.”

Cable provider-delivered Wi-Fi is often used by the industry as a customer retention tool and goodwill gesture. It typically uses the company’s pre-existing broadband infrastructure, which keeps costs low.

Bright House is soliciting customer feedback about possible new locations for future Wi-Fi hotspots. The company plans to add at least 2,000 additional hotspots by the end of this year.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bright House produced this informational video introducing its Wi-Fi service. (2 minutes)

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HBO/Cinemax Go Now Available to All Time Warner Cable Customers: A Review

Phillip Dampier — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:27:17 +0000

Time Warner Cable has opened up access to HBO GO and Max GO to all customers who subscribe to the premium movie channels. A brief beta test for Time Warner’s super-premium Signature Home customers concluded earlier this week and the service is now available to all.

Stop the Cap! tested the HBO GO service earlier today and can report the service is up and running for Time Warner customers.

HBO GO's current movie selection includes a number of older titles.

The most cumbersome part of both services is the authentication process. Graceful it is not. Customers have to start their journey at either the HBO or Cinemax “TV Everywhere” portal, select their cable operator, and then get prompted to authenticate their cable TV service. Time Warner’s authentication process makes this especially confusing by notifying customers not to use their bill payment service account username and password. Instead, customers are told to use login credentials for the cable company’s customer information and authentication portal — My Services. It is easy to get confused which username and password to use. If you do not have a “My Services” account, the registration process is even more tedious, because you have to wait for confirmation e-mail messages and hunt down a current cable bill, if you receive one in the mail at all.

Having registered for other TV Everywhere services from Time Warner Cable before, it was more than a little annoying going through the same process all over again for HBO. HBO and Max GO also require the subscriber to choose a username and password on those sites as well, which means yet another account and password to remember. After about 10 minutes of the irritating multi-step process, access was finally granted.

HBO Go currently has 230 movies available for instant viewing, a large number of which are hardly recent. The 1953 version of Titanic, for example. Really? Oh, God with George Burns and John Denver, the 1979 please-edit-me snoozefest Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and all three Back to the Future movies seemed like a lot of dated filler material for a $15 a month premium movie channel. Better offerings were found under the series, specials, and comedy categories which delivered a full library of a number of HBO productions, as well as current events shows like Real Time with Bill Maher. (The latter only included a handful of episodes from the current season and some earlier editions.)

Our biggest trouble came when we tried playing from the menu of titles. This is no Netflix. We found picture quality often lacking, with plainly visible screen anomalies, and the stream was interrupted several times for buffering. Either pent-up demand for HBO Go is causing Time Warner customers to pound the service during the business day, or HBO needs to beef up its server capacity. We did several speed tests and found our connection stable at 30/5Mbps, so this was not a Time Warner Cable broadband problem.

The best part about HBO and Cinemax GO is that it comes free with subscriptions to one or both channels. We’d have a hard time justifying paying extra for the current online viewing experience. It also remains ironic that Time Warner Cable executives continue to foster a desire to implement Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and/or consumption billing while encouraging customers to consume more bandwidth with online video services such as these.

Time Warner Cable partner Bright House Networks is anticipated to launch both services themselves shortly.

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Cable Companies & Verizon Sign Non-Aggression Pact; Consumers May Pay the Price

Phillip Dampier — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:08:41 +0000

Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks sold AWS spectrum in areas shown here to Verizon Wireless, virtually guaranteeing the cable industry will not compete in the wireless phone business.

Two years ago, Cox Communications was hungry to get into the wireless phone business. It announced it was launching “unbelievably fair” wireless — an oasis in a wireless desert of tricks and traps on offer from competing wireless companies. No more expiring minutes, the option of affordable flat rate service, and no hidden fees or surcharges were all supposed to be part of the deal.

“Our research found that value and transparency are very important to consumers when choosing a wireless service plan, but they are not finding these qualities in the wireless plans offered today,” Stephen Bye, vice president of wireless said back in 2010, introducing the service. “Total loss of unused minutes as well as unforeseen overage charges on bills are just two examples of what our customers have told us is just unfair.”

Those same issues still exist for wireless customers today, but Cox won’t be a part of the solution. The company announced this past May it was exiting the competitive arena of wireless and would simply resell Sprint service instead. Last month, it announced it wouldn’t even bother with that, and will transition its remaining wireless customers directly to Sprint.

What changed Cox’s mind? The cost of building and operating a wireless network to compete with much larger national companies. It simply no longer made sense to build a small regional wireless carrier and rent the rest of your national coverage area from other providers, who set wholesale prices at a level high enough to protect them from would-be competitors.

The lesson Cox learned first has now been taught to America’s largest cable operators Comcast and Time Warner Cable (and its sidekick Bright House Networks).

All three cable operators have effectively signed a non-aggression treaty with Verizon Wireless, agreeing to sell their unused wireless spectrum acquired by auction in 2006 at a 50% markup to Big Red. In return, Verizon will market cable service to wireless customers. It’s the ultimate non-compete clause so wide-reaching, Verizon stores will soon be selling Time Warner Cable right next to Verizon FiOS, something unheard of in the telecommunications marketplace.

It’s a win for Verizon Wireless, which accumulates additional wireless spectrum and peace of mind knowing the cable industry will not enter the wireless communications business. Cable companies get to profit from their purchase of the public airwaves and see the potential of a dramatic reduction in customer poaching, as cable and phone companies stop fighting each other for customers. Ultimately, it means customers could eventually pay the cable or phone company for all of their telecommunications services from television and broadband to wired and wireless phone service. What consumers enjoy in one-bill-convenience may eventually come with higher rates made possible from reduced competition.

Verizon Wireless' currently unused AWS spectrum favor the east coast, but not for long.

Verizon will pay $3.6 billion to Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks for the spectrum. The deal has stockholders cheering because that payment represents a tidy profit for cable operators who did absolutely nothing with the spectrum they purchased five years ago. It also makes AT&T even more intent on completing its own spectrum merger with T-Mobile USA.

The agreement has concerned consumer advocates because it seems to signal Verizon is content making money primarily from its wireless business, and will repay the favor from the cable industry by pitching phone customers on cable service. That could ultimately spell big trouble for Verizon’s stalled FiOS fiber-to-the-home network. Verizon may find it easier and cheaper to end its aggressive entry into Big Cable’s territory by simply reselling traditional cable television products. It can still market wireless products and services to cable subscribers and not endanger the new atmosphere of goodwill. Rural broadband, where cable never competes, could be served through wireless spectrum, for example.

For now, Verizon says it intends to continue competing with its FiOS network, but the company stopped deploying the service in new areas nearly two years ago.

The deal will go before regulators at the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission for review. What will likely concern them the most is the appearance of collusion between the cable companies and Verizon.

“A flag is raised when two rival networks move to start selling each other’s services,” a person familiar with the concerns of federal antitrust officials told the Washington Post. “They lose their desire, impetus, to compete. That is a big antitrust flag.”

Mark Cooper, the director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, expressed serious concern as well.

“Verizon was supposed to be the great competitor for Comcast in the video space, while Comcast has been looking for a wireless play to match the Verizon bundle,” he said. “The deal signals bad news for consumers, who can expect higher prices for video, fewer choices and higher prices for wireless.”

Who owns what

Four years into the deal, consumers may not know what company they are dealing with, as cable operators will be able to market Verizon Wireless service under their own respective cable brand names.

The deal is also trouble for lagging Clearwire, which had been providing wireless broadband service to both Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Under the agreement, both cable companies will end their relationship with Clearwire, which is particularly bad news for the wireless company because of its ongoing financial distress. Sprint, which has heavily invested in Clearwire, may ultimately find itself with an investment gone sour, troubling news for the third largest wireless company manning the barricades against a nearly-complete duopoly in wireless service between AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Cable stock cheerleader Craig Moffett from Sanford Bernstein seems thrilled with the prospect. In a research note to his Wall Street clients, Moffett says AT&T could benefit from the Verizon pact with Big Cable by ending up in a “more duopolistic industry structure without paying for it.” If the FCC approves the non-aggression pact, the deal “would amount to an unmistakable step towards the duopolization of the U.S. wireless market, inasmuch it would leave T-Mobile, once again, stranded without a 4G strategy.”

Cable investors, he adds, are likely to be excited the cable industry won’t spend billions of dollars in capital building a wireless venture, and instead has agreed to work with competitors to cross-sell products and services. With little competitive pressure, prices won’t be falling anytime soon.

That’s great news for investors, even if it is “unbelievably unfair” for consumers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bloomberg News explains the deal and its implications in the wireless industry spectrum battle. (2 minutes)

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Bright House Networks Customers Get Rebranded Time Warner iPad App for Online Viewing

Phillip Dampier — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:26:56 +0000

Bright House Networks customers now have access to more than 100 channels of online video entertainment thanks to the cable company’s release of Bright House TV, a new free app for the Apple iPad.

Essentially a rebranded version of Time Warner Cable’s TWCable TV app, Bright House TV comes with the exact same restrictions that have peeved more than a few Time Warner customers trying to use it:

You must have a minimum of Bright House Networks’ Digital-Basic Cable TV service to watch;
You must use your Bright House-supplied Internet connection to access the service on your home’s Wi-Fi connection;
The service will not work outside of your home, over alternative Internet connections, or through your smartphone;
You cannot currently access the service on any device other than an iPad.

For customers who do manage to meet all of these conditions, many report they are satisfied with the performance of the app.

“A great 1.0 version, acts as advertises, and HD looks great on the iPad,” says Bright House customer Chris McGonigal. “I would like to see fullscreen option (even though it cuts image), and the ability to hide the Status bar at the top. Also a favorite channels list, which kind of works with channel history.”

One other thing Bright House customers have in common with Time Warner Cable — they are still waiting for HBO Go, too.

“Here’s to seeing HBO Go on BHN next,” he adds.

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Bright House Suffers Worst Outage in Company’s History; Software Glitch Blamed

Phillip Dampier — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:59:21 +0000

Last Tuesday, Bright House Networks suffered the worst outage in the company’s history, knocking out cable, broadband, and telephone service for over one million Tampa Bay-area customers.

Bright House customers from the beachfront to Lakeland to Spring Hill were forced to rely on cellphones for much of the day. The company’s own 24-hour news channel, Bay News 9, couldn’t keep their Florida viewers informed about the outage, because that channel went dark as well.

Company officials blamed a software glitch for the series of progressive failures which began after 10:30am and were not repaired until later that evening.

Although Pinellas County’s 911 system remained in operation, Bright House customers couldn’t call the number from their Bright House “digital phone” line.

While customers without broadband or cable TV service were left bored during the outage, Bright House’s business customers without telephone service incurred real losses, unable to process credit card transactions or receive business calls.

Bright House has no plans to issue automatic refunds for the day without service, but WTSP-TV reports customers can directly request three days’ credit for the outage:

Send an e-mail to Bright House Networks using their online form.
Cut and paste the following into the “Describe your issue or concern” box: I am writing to request credit for Tuesday’s (9/6/11) service outage affecting phone, Internet, and cable-TV. As seen on WTSP-TV and Facebook, I am requesting three days’ credit that Bright House representatives have offered other customers. Please credit my account.
Hit submit. A credit should be issued within 48 hours, to appear on your next billing statement. The amount of the credit will vary, depending on the number of services you receive.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bright House Networks’ worst-outage-in-history was a major news story in the Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg area. Watch a selection of stories from WFTS, WTVT, WFLA, and WTSP-TV. (9 minutes)

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An Unsolicited Testimonial: Stop the Cap! Saved Us Over $20 A Month on Our Cable Bill

Phillip Dampier — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 20:00:29 +0000

These kinds of testimonials help fuel our fight on behalf of consumers for better (and cheaper) broadband:

Hi Guys,

I don’t usually take the time to write thank you’s, but I found your site the other day and managed to save over $20 on my cable bill by switching to ”Earthlink” which I had no idea was possible. When I signed up with Bright House I was promised the $45 a month price for standard Internet, but I signed up a day before their prices jumped to $50. I managed to fight to get my price down for $45, but all of a sudden that stopped and they were refusing to give me the price I signed up for, for the remainder of the year. Due to that, I switched to the Earthlink promo prices and got Bright House to switch me over. They tried to lie to me on the phone to make me think I couldn’t get the Earthlink promo pricing, but I won the argument and am now very happy.

In six months, I’ll try to switch back to Road Runner and get their promo prices.

This is such a hidden unknown gem and has saved my family lots of money. Thank you!

– Scott

Thanks Scott. Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks have Earthlink as a hidden little secret most customers know nothing about. It’s an arrangement that started way back in 2001 with the now-long-forgotten (and broken up) merger between AOL and Time Warner. A voluntary agreement to allow third party ISPs to sell broadband service over Time Warner Cable has been ongoing ever since, even though customers would routinely find Earthlink’s regular prices not so exciting, if they found them at all.

The Earthlink savings are best realized for broadband-only customers who do not want to get tied down with a double or triple-play package from their cable company. Both Time Warner Cable and Bright House charge considerably higher prices for standalone broadband service. It’s part of a marketing tactic to convince you better savings are possible with a bundled service package. But if you don’t care about the phone line or cable TV, why pay for either?

For every third-party ISP we’ve encountered reselling service on Time Warner Cable or Bright House, it seems mostly an exercise in branding. For example, Earthlink’s standard and “turbo” products are totally identical to Road Runner offered by both cable companies, with two important distinctions:

You do not get the benefit of SpeedBoost, a temporary speed increase during the first few seconds of a file transfer;
You are assigned an Earthlink e-mail address, not one from Bright House or Time Warner Cable.

In fact, Earthlink as a company seems to be running mostly on auto-pilot these days. We found their website woefully outdated, still selling speeds upgraded several years ago. If Bright House locally sells 10/1Mbps standard Road Runner service and Earthlink offers 7Mbps with a 384kbps upload speed, you will actually get 10/1Mbps from Earthlink as well. The only difference is the name of the service as it appears on your monthly Time Warner Cable or Bright House bill. Both cable companies literally just select Earthlink from a drop-down menu on the customer service computer screen. All service calls and billing are handled by the cable companies. If you need technical support, however, it will come from an overseas call center or online “chat” platform Earthlink runs. But Earthlink includes something Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers lost several years ago — up to 20 hours a month of free dial-up usage when away from home.

After the Six Month Promotion….

Earthlink charges $29.99 a month for speeds that are identical to Time Warner Cable or Bright House’s Road Runner Standard service. In most areas this is or will soon be 10/1Mbps. Turbo, which usually increases speeds to 15/1Mbps, costs another $10 a month. These promotional prices are good for six months.

When the six months are up, you are then qualified to participate in whatever New Customer Promotions Time Warner and Bright House are running for their broadband service. We are commonly seeing offers of $29.99 a month for a year of standard Road Runner service in upstate New York, with occasional offers of a year of free Road Runner Turbo service thrown in. Assuming those prices remain in effect, you should be able to secure at least 1.5 years of broadband service for $30 a month. Remember, if your cable company charges you a modem rental fee, consider investing in your own to save that additional charge. They are priced well under $100.

When your six months of Earthlink and a year of Time Warner/Bright House promotional pricing is up, simply threaten to take your business elsewhere, and you will usually find them willing to extend the promotion for an additional year. If not, schedule a cancellation date two weeks out and wait for an inevitable phone call from the customer retentions department with a special “winback” offer.

Also remember you can always start new service under the name of a spouse or family member. Third party resellers (Google “Time Warner Cable “and pay attention to the online ads) may even throw in a prepaid rebate card for signing up for service through them, so shop around when the promotions expire.

These shopping tips may apply to other cable broadband providers as well. Remember, if your local phone company is now providing more than traditional DSL, most cable companies will go out of their way to hang on to a customer threatening to walk to AT&T U-verse or Verizon FiOS. Let them fight to keep you as a customer, and you keep the savings.

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Cable and Telco’s New Money-Maker: Security & Home Automation — Coming Soon to Your City

Phillip Dampier — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:00:43 +0000

Comcast's touch control panel delivers alarm functions, home automation, and even weather updates.

Verizon Communications, Bright House Networks, Comcast/Xfinity, and Time Warner Cable are all on the verge of making a major new push to get customers to consider signing up for home security through their respective bundled offerings. It’s just the latest new way telecommunications companies are responding to Wall Street’s insatiable quest for growth in the average revenue earned from each customer. But how good are these services, and how much are they going to cost?

Time Warner Cable has offered security monitoring in a number of legacy markets inherited from their former owners. But now the company is beta testing an entirely new suite of home security applications in cities like Rochester, N.Y., with the hope of introducing the service later this year in additional markets.

Time Warner Cable and Bright House seem to be jointly testing a similar system, designed to compete with 24/7 home alarm monitoring providers like ADT or GE Home Security. Although price points have not yet been announced, Stop the Cap! has learned the cable company intends to test a basic package of home monitoring including a limited number of monitored doors and windows for between $25-30 a month, not including upfront costs and installation.

Like other alarm providers, additional services and protected points of entry will cost extra. The next generation of home security from Time Warner Cable will be controllable from apps for iPad and smartphones, in addition to a touchscreen control panel supplied with the system. By integrating the system with your home broadband connection, you can stream video from security webcams and configure alerts for any number of events.

Bright House’s proposed system, for example, would let you set a text message alert when the kids got home from school. Want to know if someone sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night? The security system can alert you to that as well.

Comcast/Xfinity has been rolling out a similar system in some of their markets. XFINITY^® Home Security also delivers monitoring services, and provides remote access over the Internet. It will also let you remotely control home appliances, lighting, and any installed web cameras. Away from home and want to see if your spouse is up to no good? Now you can quietly spy on anyone in your home while you are away.

Click here to view the embedded video.

XFINITY Home Security System from Comcast is explained in this promotional video from Comcast. (3 minutes)

Comcast’s basic monitoring package doesn’t include many of the coolest add-ons like video monitoring and access to a modern touch-based control panel that also serves up weather forecasts and even sports scores. Many customers end up with the “Preferred Package” because it delivers a much wider range of protective services. The service tested successfully in Houston and is now also available in Philadelphia, Portland, Jacksonville, Sarasota/Naples, Chattanooga and Nashville.

Comcast didn’t reinvent the wheel with their security system. They rebranded iControl Networks’ Open Home automation and security platform. Pricing? $199 for the “basic package” that didn’t impress us, or $299 for the “preferred” package which comes with the bells and whistles. Installation is sometimes included in those prices, but a $50 “activation fee” also applies. Expect to pay $30 for basic monitoring, $40 for “preferred” monitoring each month for a minimum of three years — an early termination fee applies if you cancel early. Also expect to pay more for any optional extras you add.

Verizon's alarm system was promoted at this year's Consumers Electronics Show.

Verizon Communications’ new ominously-named “Home Monitoring and Control” system is powered by its fiber to the home FiOS service. Introduced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Verizon has teamed up with lock-maker Schlage, who manufactures the “smart door locks,” and Motorola, which throws in 4Home, their home automation platform. Trane even includes a smart-thermostat, remotely controllable.

Unlike systems sold by cable competitors, Verizon’s is budget-minded, priced at just $9.99 per month. But the system package at that price is not remotely monitored and was designed to be sold to the do-it-yourself type. For ten bucks, you get to control everything through your television set top box, smartphone, or tablet computer. If you want more, you pay more. An upgraded package includes remote door locking/unlocking and remote controllable webcams that you can pan and zoom.

The deluxe package throws in the remote monitoring service and a smart-home energy use suite that let’s you monitor and control energy consumption of your home appliances.

“The more services they can get someone to sign up for, the stickier that customer is to them,” said Bill Ablondi, director of home systems research for the Parks Associates market research firm.

Most systems will come with a term contract of 12-36 months, and many could fetch discounts for heavily-bundled customers. Most insurance companies also provide up to a 15 percent discount on homeowner policies for remotely monitored burglar and fire detection systems.

For the cable and phone companies, home security could easily bring another $40 a month in revenue and put many cable bills north of $200 a month in combined services. Since virtually all of the systems were developed by third parties, development costs are low, and since existing broadband service in most homes provides ready connectivity to an alarm monitoring center, the costs to provide the service are minimal.

For existing security companies, the pending threat of big cable and phone companies eating their business for breakfast isn’t one they are taking lying down.

ADT is developing its own suite of home automation and security monitoring, and didn’t waste anytime taking a swipe at the cable companies.

“We’ve been in this business for 135 years,” said ADT spokesman Bob Tucker, starting with telegraphs and personal security. As for Bright House and Verizon, he said, “Would you really want to trust the security of your home and family to the same people that install HBO?”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Verizon’s forthcoming home security and automation system is promoted in this company-supplied video. (1 minute)

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Bright House Says No to Internet Overcharging: No Caps – Not Even Under Consideration

Phillip Dampier — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:56:57 +0000

Bright House Networks, a cable company primarily serving Florida and other southeastern states says it has no plans to implement Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps or consumption billing. But a company spokesperson went even farther, telling Tampa Bay Online the cable company was not even considering them.

Bright House, which relies on Time Warner Cable’s programming negotiators and sells broadband under the Road Runner brand, was among the only companies in Florida that was willing to go on record stating they were not considering limiting broadband customers.

Other providers were unwilling to follow Bright House’s lead:

AT&T: “2 percent of our customers were using 20 percent of our bandwidth,” said an AT&T spokesman, so the company slapped 150GB usage limits on DSL customers, 250GB on U-verse customers. The overlimit fee is $10 for every 50GB extra.
Verizon Florida: “At this point, we’ve not implemented any usage controls or broadband caps. We’ll continue to evaluate what’s best to ensure our customers get the highest quality broadband service for the best value,” the company said. But it also added: “We’re continuing to evaluate usage-based pricing for our wireline broadband customers.”

“Bandwidth caps stifle consumer choice,” said Parul Desai, public policy counsel for Consumer’s Union. Desai notes customers do not sign up for pricey high-speed FiOS broadband service from companies like Verizon just to read e-mail. Customers who are willing to pay premium prices for super high speeds certainly don’t want a usage cap devaluing their broadband package.

Comcast, for example, uniformly limits consumption to 250GB per month, even on high speed plans delivering over 50Mbps service.

“It’s like building a rocket that you blow up after it reaches 250 feet into the air,” says Stop the Cap! reader Will in Tampa, who shared the article with us. “What is the point of having 50 or 100Mbps service from any provider if they slap a limit on it like that.”

Will thinks customers will abandon higher speed packages in droves once they realize they really can’t use them.

“With some of these companies talking about caps around 40GB per month, you can’t even take your connection for a test drive,” he says. “You might as well stick with basic speeds, just to remind and discourage you from putting yourself over their stupid limits.”

Desai suspects broadband companies will try limiting their customers, if only because they face few competitors consumers can use instead and they have video services to protect. But she suspects some consumers will either abandon or seriously downgrade their broadband service and find other ways to trade large files and content.

“It’s not inevitable they’re going to succeed,” she told TBO. “People only find value in broadband because of what they can access with it. If more people feel constrained, they’ll start looking for another way.”

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Verizon FiOS Promises Tampa Bay Customer 25/25Mbps Speed, Delivers 25/2Mbps Service

Phillip Dampier — Wed, 25 May 2011 18:16:12 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

WFTS-TV in Tampa launched a consumer investigation when a local customer noticed the Verizon FiOS Internet service he was paying for — 25/25Mbps — was actually only providing him with 2.88Mbps upload speeds. Even worse, both providers in the Tampa Bay area — Bright House Communications and Verizon, say actual speeds are not guaranteed, leading at least one customer to file an official complaint with the Federal Communications Commission for false advertising and misrepresentation by Verizon Communications. WFTS examines whether providers have to actually deliver the speeds they promise, or does the fine print get them off the hook, leaving you paying more than you should for Internet speeds you are not getting. (3 minutes)

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