Stop the Cap! » CenturyLink

Comcast Offers $300 Rebate for Comcast Cable + Verizon Wireless Service in Pacific Northwest

Phillip Dampier — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:11:38 +0000

Comcast’s controversial deal with Verizon Wireless to cross-promote cable and wireless service has come to fruition in Washington and Oregon with a new introductory offer pitching Comcast’s Xfinity cable with Verizon Wireless service that includes a $300 customer rebate.

The first appearance of the new joint marketing effort started this week in metro Seattle and Portland, and includes nearby communities. Comcast employees are now staffing at least eight Verizon Wireless stores in Seattle, primarily to pitch the company’s cable service.

The most aggressive offer includes a Visa prepaid card rebate of up to $300 for new customers who agree to bundle Comcast’s phone, Internet, and television service with a new Verizon Wireless smartphone or tablet plan, assuming the two companies can find enough new customers who do not already subscribe to cable or mobile service.

Traditional telephone companies like CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, which provide service in the region, appear to be most at risk from the bundled service promotions. CenturyLink provides landline telephone service and DSL bundled with satellite television. Frontier does the same and also offers a limited part of the region FiOS fiber to the home service it acquired from Verizon Communications.

Should customers sign on to the bundled offer from Verizon and Comcast, there would be little reason to do business with either CenturyLink or Frontier.

Consumer advocates like Public Knowledge, along with smaller cell phone companies, satellite provider DirecTV, and other consumer groups have co-signed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission raising questions about the parameters of the cross promotion deal, which the companies and groups say “could be a significant realignment of the competitive landscape in these industries.”

No related stories.

Hidden Infomercial: Florida Morning Show Falls All Over CenturyLink’s Prism

Phillip Dampier — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:12:26 +0000

In CenturyLink's corner....

The Fox station serving southwest Florida has a love affair with CenturyLink’s Prism service — a fiber to the neighborhood service comparable to AT&T U-verse that CenturyLink is introducing in some of its larger service areas. WFTX in Cape Coral/Naples devoted nearly seven minutes of airtime on its “FOX4 Morning Blend” show to a thinly-disguised infomercial/interview pitching the service to unsuspecting viewers who may not have realized CenturyLink bought their way on the morning show.

FOX4 Morning Blend is supposed to be a “lifestyles” information and entertainment talk show, airing weekdays at 8am on the Fox affiliate. Viewers who thought they were getting the local equivalent of LIVE! With Kelly are really getting a series of paid placement interviews and features disguised as feature-oriented journalism.

Visitors who dig deep on WFTX’s website might raise an eyebrow when discovering the section that explains the show:

FOX4 Morning Blend features a variety of community organizations, businesses, and happenings in Southwest Florida. This entertaining talk show format offers a great opportunity for sponsors to reach potential customers.

A few minutes into the interview, the station cuts to a blatant commercial for CenturyLink Prism it calls “a video.” Show host Bill Wood can’t help but gush over Prism’s features. Viewers confused about whether the show represents paid placement advertising or actual journalism can be forgiven. Both show hosts — Bill Wood and Carley Wegner — have extensive reporting and anchoring backgrounds, and Wood is particularly familiar to the station’s viewers as the weekday morning news feature reporter. Now he sells CenturyLink, among other products and services.

What viewers won’t find is a comprehensive listing of all of the sponsors. CenturyLink does not appear in the list. At one point, the station provides a tiny on-screen explanation labeled “Sponsored by CenturyLink” as a list of store locations flashes by.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Give us seven minutes and we’ll sell you CenturyLink Prism. FOX4 Morning Blend mixes actual reporting with disguised advertising. (7 minutes)

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Copper Thieves Wipe Out Phone Service in Eugene, Oregon

Phillip Dampier — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:06:02 +0000

Copper thieves left thousands of phone customers in Eugene, Ore. without telephone service, forcing volunteer firefighters to get walk-in reports of fire and medical emergencies after 911 service was disrupted.

Authorities are looking for the suspects who scaled telephone poles and removed several hundred feet of critical phone wiring that provided service in the Eugene area. CenturyLink officials rushed to pull new cables across phone poles to get service restored, and much of Eugene had their telephone landlines back within 24 hours.

CenturyLink and Oregon authorities claim copper thieves are now primarily targeting copper landlines because electrical lines are more dangerous and phone wire insulation is easier to burn or strip off, leaving the thieves with spools of bare copper wiring easily sold to scrap dealers.

Copper prices have spiked over the past few years, increasing interest among thieves. Officials in several states have partnered with scrap dealers to try and limit illicit sales, and criminal penalties have been increased.

Occasionally, copper line theft also disrupts cell phone service, because many cell towers are still connected via copper circuits, especially in rural areas thieves favor.

Click here to view the embedded video.

KMTR in Eugene covers the latest copper caper affecting CenturyLink phone customers in Oregon. (2 minutes)

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Customers “Probably Don’t Need Higher (

Phillip Dampier — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:11:02 +0000

Sometimes you can’t please some people no matter what you do.

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative’s $64 million fiber-to-the-home expansion project will finally bring 21st century broadband speeds to northern New Mexico. The electric co-op intends to deliver broadband speeds up to 100Mbps to 20,000 largely rural residents and businesses in Taos, Colfax, and Rio Arriba counties who have had limited access to cable broadband or live with speeds often less than 1Mbps from CenturyLink-delivered DSL.

“It’s a whole new ballgame for rural New Mexico,” shares Stop the Cap! reader Raul. “But the pinheads at the local weekly newspaper are ringing their hands over the project, suggesting only businesses deserve 100Mbps while the rest of us should be satisfied with speeds under a megabit per second.”

Indeed, editors at the Sangre de Christo Chronicle are wringing their hands over the project:

But many of us in the Kit Carson service area already have Internet service — and we’re completely happy with it. Kit Carson CEO Luis Reyes, Jr. said a large portion of the organization’s electric customers are currently under-served by other providers with Internet speeds of less than one megabit (1,000 kilobits) per second.

We have no reason to doubt that, but many of these customers probably don’t need the higher speeds. For the Internet customers who use the Internet for email, Facebook, news and other basic functions, Kit Carson’s prices will be most important. Most of us will not pay more for faster Internet speed we don’t need, but we will consider switching to a local provider if it offers identical or better service and prices.

“CenturyLink barely delivers DSL today, and has shown no interest in investing substantially in northern New Mexico, and outside of concentrated built-up areas there is no cable competition,” Raul says. “Kit Carson is the only local concern that has shown any real interest in making our community better, and the local newspaper is complaining about it.”

Proposed service area for Kit Carson Electric's new fiber to the home network serving northern New Mexico.

Kit Carson Electric’s project will provide a true fiber-to-the-home service bundling television, telephone, and broadband service — a substantial upgrade over what the telephone company has on offer. With speeds far beyond what cable and phone providers in New Mexico are accustomed to providing, the region stands to benefit from entrepreneurs building digital economy businesses over a broadband network that can actually help, not hinder online development.

Currently, area residents pay CenturyLink up to $55 a month for 1.5/1Mbps DSL service. Residents are so excited by the prospects of much faster speeds at significantly lower prices, Kit Carson Electric has developed an innovative stop-gap service for residents still waiting for direct fiber connections — fiber-to-wireless service. New and existing customers can sign up for the service for a $100 installation fee and choose from three service tiers:

3Mbps — $29.95/month
7Mbps — $39.95/month
10Mbps — $49.95/month

A three year contract is required (early termination fee is $200). But customers who eventually obtain Kit Carson Electric’s fiber service will automatically satisfy their contract requirement.

“Kit Carson’s wireless project already blows away CenturyLink’s speeds and pricing, and that is for inferior wireless,” Raul argues. “The Chronicle doesn’t have a clue.”

We can’t understand the newspaper’s concerns either. Kit Carson Electric has already demonstrated their prices (and interest) in northern New Mexico is superior to that of CenturyLink, owner of former Baby Bell Qwest, which serves New Mexico.

Republican Sen. Jeff Bingaman is thrilled with Kit Carson’s broadband initiative.

“This major investment in broadband technology is exactly the kind of project I had envisioned when I voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman said. “This grant is not only creating jobs now in northern New Mexico, it is laying the groundwork to attract new businesses, improve healthcare services and create new education opportunities in the future.”

The electric co-op has been successful operating non-profit businesses selling propane, telecommunications, and economic development space. The fiber project will also allow the electric utility to deploy “smart grid” technology to increase the efficiency of their electric service.

A groundbreaking ceremony at the broadband project’s command center held this past summer also coincided with a public emergency communications network upgrade which will increase the efficiency and reliability of first responders and other emergency and public safety agencies.

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CenturyLink Announces Usage Caps; Conveniently Exempts Their Own Video Content

Phillip Dampier — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:46:29 +0000

CenturyLink announces their own Internet Overcharging scheme; customers call to cancel their service.

CenturyLink is quietly introducing usage caps for its broadband customers that will limit residential customers to between 150-250GB of usage per month.

The Internet Overcharging scheme was inserted into the company’s High Speed Internet Service Management disclosure page, and suggests heavy users are using an inappropriate amount of data, slowing down the network for other users:

The majority of CenturyLink High-Speed Internet customers make great use of their service and comply with the CenturyLink High-Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement. An extremely small percentage use their service excessively, or at such extreme high volumes, that they violate the terms of their CenturyLink High-Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement. While this high volume use is very rare, CenturyLink is committed to helping these customers find a high-speed Internet solution to better meet their needs.

CenturyLink is announcing the following Excessive Usage Policy (EUP), which will become effective in February 2012:

CenturyLink’s EUP applies to all residential high speed Internet customers and is only enforced in the downstream (from Internet to customer) direction. Video services provided by CenturyLink PRISM™ TV are not subject to the usage limits. The policy has the following usage limits per calendar month:

Customers purchasing service at speeds of 1.5Mbps and below, have a usage limit of 150 Gigabytes (GB) of download volume per month.

Customers purchasing service at speeds greater than 1.5Mbps, have a limit of 250GB in download volume per month.

There are no overage charges or metering fees for usage as part of the Policy.

The company exempts their own video service PRISM TV from the scheme.

“It’s another CenturyLink ripoff in action, and despite their claims that they treat all data the same, they certainly do not,” says CenturyLink customer Rob Cabella. “Their video programming is sent from local facilities, as data, down the same pipe as their broadband service, yet they conveniently leave their TV product out of the usage cap equation.”

Prism customers can watch unlimited TV, but face limited broadband usage over the exact same pipeline.

Cabella says PRISM operates much like AT&T’s U-verse. Fiber provides service into individual neighborhoods and then standard copper phone lines deliver service the rest of the way to customer homes.

“It’s one pipe they divide up for video, phone, and Internet, but they are protecting their video service by limiting broadband use while leaving their television and phone service completely unlimited,” Cabella says. “Video is the biggest bandwidth hog of all, and CenturyLink invites you to watch as much as you want, as long as it comes from them.”

Cabella thinks the very fact CenturyLink is offering unlimited video disproves their argument about ensuring appropriate levels of broadband usage.

“Their local facilities get overloaded to the point where they temporarily stop signing up customers, yet it’s a video free-for-all, as long as you get your video from ‘the right place’ and that sure isn’t Netflix or Hulu,” Cabella notes.

CenturyLink’s limits will apply to broadband customers signed up for PRISM or the company’s traditional DSL service. Uploads will not count against the cap.

For the moment, overlimit fees will not be charged and the company will send warning letters to offenders that invite customers to migrate “to a higher speed if available or to a business grade data service that better fits their bandwidth usage.”

Customers who repeatedly exceed their usage limits after being notified may have their service discontinued.

Cabella isn’t waiting.

“I called my local cable company which still offers unlimited service and signed up this morning,” Cabella says. “CenturyLink didn’t even know what I was talking about when I called and said their website must have been hacked or in error. Why would I want to do business with a company that doesn’t even have a clue what their own business is doing? Goodbye CenturyLink.”

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CenturyLink Sales Reps in Oregon Harrass Residents With Suspicious Questions, They Call Police

Phillip Dampier — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:57:05 +0000

The pushy door-to-door salesman is back, and he’s working for CenturyLink.

Lake Oswego (Ore.) residents have been the unwelcome recipients of repeated doorbell ringing by a small army of young CenturyLink salespeople. Described by some residents as “rude,” “pushy,” and intrusive, the salespeople pelted would-be customers with questions about how many televisions and computers were found within their homes, and what kind of telecommunications services they had.

Some residents were so alarmed by the aggressive and suspicious sales tactics, they called police.

“They were persistent, they came to my door four times,” Lake Oswego resident Betty Endress, who lives in a private gated community, told KOIN-TV. “We have a ‘no solicitation’ policy.”

Endress refused to open the door because, in her words, it was CenturyLink — a company nobody had heard of.

In fact, CenturyLink acquired Qwest, the former Baby Bell that predominately serves the mountain west states.

CenturyLink admits the aggressive sales force belongs to them. They are being sent into neighborhoods where the company recently upgraded its broadband service, trying to lure customers away from the cable competition. But one South Portland resident was so alarmed when three salespeople showed up on his doorstep all at once, he called 911.

Telecommunications providers have been victimized by some criminals who represent themselves as company employees to force their way into residential homes to commit crimes. CenturyLink says concerned residents should ask to see CenturyLink branded identification badges, uniforms, and a copy of the license permitting them to pursue door-to-door sales.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Residents in private, gated communities told KOIN-TV in Portland they’d prefer not to be visited by CenturyLink salespeople on their doorsteps, whether the sales force holds a business license or not. (3 minutes)

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Big Telecom’s Astroturf Snowjob: Blizzard of Bull from CenturyLink and Comcast to Kill Competition

Phillip Dampier — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:44:09 +0000

You can look all over this astroturf group's website and never find the fact it's bought and paid for on behalf of Colorado's largest cable company -- Comcast.

The next time Comcast or CenturyLink wants to increase your rates because of the “increased costs of doing business,” you might want to ask them why they have collectively spent more than $300,000 on an astroturf campaign to stop the city of Longmont, Col. (pop. 86,000) from using excess fiber capacity to provide competition to the phone and cable company without raising taxes a penny.

Longmont voters are headed to the polls today with a simple question to answer: should the city be allowed to open their fiber network to all-comers to provide competitive video, data, and telephone services to city residents. Longmont’s fiber network was constructed in the 1990s as part of its electrical infrastructure. Some utility companies buried enormous amounts of fiber intending to use it to electronically collect usage data from ratepayers so meter readers could become a thing of the past. Like in other cities, Longmont now has a fiber network that is woefully underused, and the city wants to open up the tremendous excess capacity for telecommunications uses. They are even open to allowing Comcast and CenturyLink to use the network to help service their own respective customers, but the thought a new competitor (including a community-owned provider) might deliver service over that network has created an absurd $300,000 Hissyfit.

Comcast has been caught funding the majority of the opposition, the so-called “No on 2A” and “Look Before We Leap” projects, sponsored primarily by the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association, which counts Comcast as a member.

But visitors to the campaign’s cheesy website never realize who is running the show because the effort hides its association with Big Telecom.

It’s a classic example of Astroturf Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Scare residents into believing the city will raise taxes or go into financial distress. Raise uncertainty by claiming important details are being left out. Encourage doubt by comparing the advanced fiber network with anemic public Wi-Fi failures of the past involving Earthlink (remember them?).

But the No on 2A campaign is also willing to check themselves into a deluxe suite at the Hypocrisy Hotel, accusing city officials of hiding the names of their pro-fiber supporters and backers, including (gasp!) a company based in France!

The No on 2A website breathlessly relates the incriminating documents were unearthed from “previously secret emails just made public thanks to a Colorado Open Records Act.” They suggest a nefarious connection with Alcatel-Lucent because that company, which sells products and services related to fiber networks, communicated with the city in a handful of e-mail messages last summer. You know those French, always up to something.

When it doubt, blame the French for being in on it.

The rich, buttery irony of a “group” secretly funded by the state’s largest cable company accusing others of keeping secrets is ignored at Kabletown.

But then I’ve received e-mail from Alcatel-Lucent (and Comcast) myself. And I have a French last name. Sacrebleu!

The website’s “opponents,” evidently gleaned from the few hundred residents that signed their visitor’s book, includes names like Joanna Crawford, “Garrett County,” and El Cordova, which we think could be the name of a Mexican pro-wrestler, we’re not sure.

City officials are stunned by the sheer amount of money being spent by cable and phone companies to keep competition far, far away. So apparently is the local media, which has taken to identifying the “grass roots” opposition right down to their job title and name of the lobbying firm they work for.

Take Times-Call, which helpfully discloses “Look Before We Leap” spokesman George Merritt is actually a senior strategist for Onsight Public Affairs of Denver. That’s a real nice way to say “lobbying firm hired to develop social media strategies to ~~snooker~~ influence public opinion on behalf of corporate clients.”

You know you’re not dealing with a neighborhood group lobbying to reduce road speeds in the neighborhood or sign a petition for improved trash collection when you read Leap’s financial disclosure reports:

$120,913.64 to mass communications firm SE2 of Denver for a variety of services, including mail pieces, consulting, two television buys and ad production and design.
$70,500 to Rocky Mountain Voter Outreach of Denver for “canvass, management rent and miscellaneous associates.”
$37,500 to OnSight Public Affairs for consulting.
$22,000 to Drake Research and Strategy of Boulder for polling.
$15,776.84 to Zata3 for phone work.
$12,260 to Holland and Hart of Denver for legal expenses.
$8,000 to EIS of Grand Junction for consulting.
$4,334.65 to Campaign Products of the Rockies, of Denver, for a voter file, mailing lists, stickers and yard signs.
$2,500 to Mark Stevens of Denver for research.
$743.75 to Tim Thomas of Boulder for general campaign work.

The whole dog and pony show of Big Telecom money has bemused Longmont mayor Bryan Baum, who supports the 2A measure and believes the distortion campaign has gone way over the top.

“It doesn’t really matter at this stage of the game,” Baum told the newspaper. “It’s going to the electorate. The electorate will vote. And we will know on Tuesday how they voted – if they believe a $300,000 ad campaign, or if they believe the people they’ve entrusted their votes to.”

Some of that $300,000 has also gone into vilifying a real grass-roots effort in support of the Longmont fiber initiative — Longmont’s Future. Comcast’s front group tried to raise questions about where that pro-fiber group got their backing and money. The newspaper discovered Longmont’s Future isn’t backed by any French conglomerate or nefarious outside interest. It’s the work of Jonathan Rice, who operates the website all by himself, spending a grand total of $353 to fight Comcast’s $300,000.

“Every single candidate for office and every incumbent, in every race, supports this measure,” says Rice. “But Comcast and its friends are more interested in profit than progress, and continue to run a smear campaign to spread misinformation and outright lies – they recently posted Mayor Baum’s name as an opponent of 2A when he is actually a vociferous supporter.”

Community Broadband Networks has compiled a series of articles detailing the project and helping to expose the so-called “grassroots” opponents. We encourage readers to become better acquainted with the underhanded tactics community broadband opponents will use to stop anything that resembles competition.

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Telephone Companies Bilking Consumers for Fatter Revenue Is as Simple as “ABC”

Phillip Dampier — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:20:05 +0000

The primary backers of the ABC Plan

Today, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is scheduled to deliver a major announcement on reforming the Universal Service Fund (USF) — a federal program designed to subsidize the costs of delivering telecommunications services to rural America.

The reform, long overdue, would transition a significant percentage of USF fees every telephone customer pays towards broadband deployment — a noble endeavor. For years, Americans have paid more than $5 billion annually to phone companies large and small to maintain rural landline service. Small co-op phone companies depend on the income to deliver affordable service in places like rural Iowa, Kansas, and Alaska. But large companies like AT&T and Verizon also collect a significant share (around $800 million annually) to reduce their costs of service in the rural communities they serve.

That’s particularly ironic for AT&T, which time and time again has sought the right to abandon universal rural landline service altogether.

Genachowski’s idea would divert USF funding towards broadband construction projects. The argument goes that even low speed DSL requires a well-maintained landline network, so phone companies that want to deploy rural broadband will have to spend the money on necessary upgrades to provide just enough service to earn their USF subsidies. The lower the speed, the lower the cost to upgrade networks and provide the service. Some may choose wireless technology instead. Since the telephone companies have fought long and hard to define “broadband” as anything approaching 3-4Mbps, that will likely be the kind of speed rural Americans will receive.

At first glance, USF reform seems like a good idea, but as with everything at the FCC these days, the devil is always in the details.

Dampier: Another day, another self-serving plan from the phone companies that will cost you more.

While headline skimmers are likely to walk away with the idea that the FCC is doing something good for rural broadband, in fact, the Commission may simply end up rubber stamping an industry-written and supported plan that will substantially raise phone bills and divert your money into projects and services the industry was planning to sell you anyway.

Stop the Cap! wrote about the ABC Plan a few weeks ago when we discovered almost all of the support for the phone-company-written proposal comes from the phone companies who back it, as well as various third party organizations that receive substantial financial support from those companies. It’s a dollar-a-holler astroturf movement in the making, and if the ABC Plan is enacted, you will pay for it.

[Read Universal Service Reform Proposal from Big Telcos Would Rocket Phone Bills Higher and Astroturf and Industry-Backed, Dollar-a-Holler Friends Support Telco’s USF Reform Plan.]

Here is what you probably won’t hear at today’s event.

At the core of the ABC Plan is a proposal to slash the per-minute rates rural phone companies can charge big city phone companies like AT&T and Verizon to connect calls to rural areas. You win a gold star if you correctly guessed this proposal originated with AT&T and Verizon, who together will save literally billions in call connection costs under their plan.

With a proposal like this, you would assume most rural phone companies are howling in protest. It turns out some are, especially some of the smallest, family-run and co-op based providers. But a bunch of phone companies that consider rural America their target area — Frontier, CenturyLink, FairPoint and Windstream, are all on board with AT&T and Verizon. Why?

Because these phone companies have a way to cover that lost revenue — by jacking up your phone bill’s USF surcharge to as much as $11 a month per line to make up the difference. In the first year of implementation, your rates could increase up to $4.50 per line (and that fee also extends to cell phones). Critics have been widely publicizing the increased phone bills guaranteed under the ABC Plan. In response, advocates for the industry are rushing out the results of a new study released yesterday from the Phoenix Center Chief Economist Dr. George S. Ford that claims the exact opposite. Dr. Ford claims each customer could pay approximately $14 less per year in access charges if the industry’s ABC Plan is fully implemented.

Genachowski

Who is right? State regulators suggest rate increases, not decreases, will result. The “Phoenix Center,” unsurprisingly, has not disclosed who paid for the study, but there is a long record of a close working relationship between that research group and both AT&T and Verizon.

But it gets even worse.

This shell game allows your local phone company to raise rates and blame it on the government, despite the fact those companies will directly benefit from that revenue in many cases. It’s a real win-win for AT&T and Verizon, who watch their costs plummet while also sticking you with a higher phone bill.

The USF program was designed to provide for the neediest rural phone companies, but under the new industry-written rules being considered by the FCC, just about everyone can get a piece, as long as “everyone” is defined as “the phone company.” There is a reason this plan does not win the hearts and minds of the cable industry, independent Wireless ISPs, municipalities, or other competing upstarts. As written, the USF reform plan guarantees virtually all of the financial support stays in the Bell family. Under the arcane rules of participation, only telephone companies are a natural fit to receive USF money.

Genachowski will likely suggest this plan will provide for rural broadband in areas where it is unavailable today. He just won’t say what kind of broadband rural America will get. He can’t, because the industry wrote their own rules in their plan to keep accountability and oversight as far away as possible.

For example, let’s assume you are a frustrated customer of Frontier Communications in West Virginia who lives three blocks away from the nearest neighbor who pays $50 a month for 3Mbps DSL broadband. You can’t buy the service at any price because Frontier doesn’t offer it. You have called them a dozen times and they keep promising it’s on the way, but they cannot say when. You may have even seen them running new cable in the neighborhood.

Frontier has made it clear they intend to wire a significantly greater percentage of the Mountain State than Verizon ever did when it ran things. Let’s take them at their word for this example.

The telephone companies have helpfully written their own rules for the FCC to adopt.

Frontier’s decision to provide broadband service in West Virginia does not come out of the goodness of their heart. At a time when landline customers are increasingly disconnecting service, Frontier’s long-term business plan is to keep customers connected by selling packages of phone, broadband, and satellite TV in rural markets. Investment in DSL broadband deployment has been underway with or without the assistance of the Universal Service Fund because it makes financial sense. Our customer in West Virginia might disconnect his landline and use a cell phone instead, costing Frontier any potential broadband, TV and telephone service revenue.

Under the ABC Plan, Frontier can be subsidized by ratepayers nationwide to deliver the service they were planning to provide anyway. And what kind of service? The same 3Mbps DSL the neighbors have.

If your county government, a cable operator, or wireless competitor decided they could deliver 10-20Mbps broadband for the same $50 a month, could they receive the USF subsidy to build a better network instead? Under the phone company plan, the answer would be almost certainly no.

Simon Fitch, the consumer advocate of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, which advises the FCC on universal service matters, says the ABC Plan is a consumer disaster.

“Although a stated goal of the FCC’s reform effort is to refocus universal-service funding to support broadband, the industry’s ABC plan requires no real commitment to make broadband available to unserved and underserved communities,” Fitch writes. “Companies would receive funds to provide broadband with upload and download speeds that are already obsolete. States would be given no real enforcement power.”

Fitch is certain companies like AT&T and Verizon will receive enormous ratepayer-financed subsidies they don’t actually need to provide service.

Back to AT&T.

In several states, AT&T is seeking the right to terminate its universal service obligation altogether, which would allow the same company fiercely backing the ABC Plan to entirely walk away from its landline network. Why? Because AT&T sees its future profits in wireless. Under the ABC Plan, AT&T could build rural cell towers with your money to provide “replacement service” over a wireless network with or without great coverage, and with a 2GB usage cap.

At the press conference, Genachowski could still declare victory because rural America would, in fact, get broadband. Somehow, the parts about who is actually paying for it, the fact it comes with no speed, coverage, or quality guarantees, and starts with a 2GB usage cap on the wireless side will all be left out.

Fortunately, not everyone is as enamored with the ABC Plan as the groups cashing checks written by AT&T.

In addition to state regulators, Consumers Union, the AARP, Free Press, and the National Association of Consumer Advocates are all opposed to the plan, which delivers all of the benefits to giant phone companies while sticking you with the bill.

There is a better way. State regulators and consumer groups have their own plans which accomplish the same noble goal of delivering subsidies to broadband providers of all kinds without increasing your telephone bill. It’s up to the FCC to demonstrate it’s not simply a rubber stamp for the schemes being pushed by AT&T and Verizon.

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CenturyLink Copies Comcast: Another 1.5Mbps Low Income Broadband Plan With Gotchas

Phillip Dampier — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:26:56 +0000

CenturyLink has unveiled its own discounted Internet access program for the income-challenged, loaded with tricks and traps buried in the fine print.

Dubbed CenturyLink Internet Basics, the 1.5Mbps DSL service is available to those who currently qualify for Lifeline Affordable Telephone Service, a federal program that provides discounts on basic monthly telephone service to eligible low-income consumers. The service sells for $9.95 a month, before taxes and fees.

But buried in the fine print are a number of surprises that deliver higher prices and some nasty surprises (underlining ours):

Listed High-speed Internet rate of $9.95/mo. applies for first 12 months of service (after which the rate reverts to $14.95/mo. for the next 48 months of service), and requires a 12-month term agreement or 24-month term agreement (if purchasing Netbook);
Customer must either lease a modem/router from CenturyLink for an additional monthly charge or purchase a modem/router from CenturyLink for a one-time charge, and a one-time High-Speed Internet activation fee applies;
A one-time professional installation charge (if selected by customer) and a one-time shipping and handling fee applies to customer’s modem/router;
Taxes, Fees, and Surcharges – Applicable taxes, fees, and surcharges include a carrier Universal Service charge, carrier cost recovery surcharges, state and local fees that vary by area and certain in-state surcharges. Cost recovery fees are not taxes or government-required charges for use (which means they are little more than bill padding junk fees). Taxes, fees, and surcharges apply based on standard monthly, not promotional, rates;
The first bill will include charges for the first full month of service billed in advance, prorated charges for service from the date of installation to bill date, and one-time charges and fees described above.
Netbook purchase must be paid in full to CenturyLink prior to shipment. Shipping and handling fees, and applicable taxes will apply. If customer purchases Netbook as part of the CenturyLink Internet Basic service, all warranty and support for the Netbook and accompanying equipment will be covered by the manufacturer or other identified third party, not CenturyLink.
No software applications or wireless service are included with the Netbook.
An early termination fee will apply based on the applicable monthly recurring service fee multiplied by the number of months remaining in the minimum service period, up to $200.

Unlike Comcast, CenturyLink claims it will provide equivalent discounts for faster speeds — an important consideration for those with school-age children at home who may need multimedia capability for research and studies.

CenturyLink also offers a netbook computer for an additional $150, plus shipping and taxes, at the time of enrollment in the program. The service also includes educational training, a 30-day money back guarantee, Norton Security Suite, and parental controls.

“While the Internet has become part of daily life for most Americans, many still aren’t connected because the cost is beyond their reach. CenturyLink is pleased to introduce this new program that offers affordable High-Speed Internet service and computers to those who need help getting online,” said CenturyLink CEO and President Glen F. Post, III.

That and the fact the company was required to offer discounted Internet service as a condition for the approval of their acquisition of Savvis, a web hosting company, according to Broadband Reports.

Like Comcast, participation in the program requires meeting a number of terms and pre-conditions:

Reside where CenturyLink offers Internet service;
Have not subscribed to CenturyLink Internet service within the last 90 days and are not a current CenturyLink Internet customer;
Do not have an overdue CenturyLink bill or unreturned equipment;
Follow current guidelines for Lifeline/TAP phone service programs.

Free training programs will be introduced starting this fall in Foley, Ala.; Dumas, Ark.; Eagle, Colo.; Tallahassee, Fla.; Phoenix; Galesburg, Ill.; Franklin, Ind.; Billings and Great Falls, Mont.; Las Vegas; Farmington, N.M.; Rockingham, N.C.; Lorain, Ohio; Columbia River Gorge, Ore.; Greenwood, S.C.; Seattle and Yakima, Wash.; and Glenwood City, Wis. Other communities where the training is taking place will be announced in 2012.

Many of the terms and conditions of the discounted Internet program are not very different from standard CenturyLink new customer promotions, which promise discounted service but leave a lot of surprise charges, fees, and contract commitment details to the tiny fine print customers have to search to find (or wait to find out on their first bill.)

Yet like Comcast, CenturyLink will seek to take credit for addressing the digital divide when in fact they are not selling the service to those who don’t want or need $40 Internet bills, but are not poor enough to qualify for the $10 Internet program on offer here.

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Broadband Life in Idaho: Bears Rubbing Against Towers Knock Out Internet Service

Phillip Dampier — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:32:34 +0000

(Courtesy: Pando Networks)

Bears who fancy a good rub up against wireless Internet transmission towers were blamed for knocking out service for customers in the Potlatch area one day, a problem unique to rural communities who make due with whatever broadband access they can find.

Such is life in rural Idaho, deemed by Pando Networks to be America’s slowest broadband state, with average Internet speeds of just 318kbps.

Stop the Cap! reader Jeff in Pocatello is happy the big city New York Times has noticed Idaho’s online challenges.

“Please take notice of this newspaper article about our online experience here in Idaho,” Jeff writes. “While it underplays the near-total failure of our state legislature to recognize there -is- a broadband problem here, at least the rest of the country will understand just how bad Internet access remains in rural America.”

Jeff should know. Pando Networks calls Pocatello America’s slowest Internet city. It’s no surprise why. Pocatello residents are stuck between a rock — the infamous Internet Overcharging leader Cable ONE (incidentally owned by NY Times‘ rival The Washington Post), and a hard place — Qwest/CenturyLink DSL.

Nobody does Internet Overcharging better than Cable ONE, which baits customers with high speed access and then ruins the deal with an $8 monthly modem rental fee, infamously low usage caps and a two-year contract plan that subscribers call a ripoff.

“Cable ONE never heard of a square deal because they break every consumer rule in the book,” Jeff says. “Although the company pitches speeds up to 50Mbps, they tie it to a two-year contract that only delivers one year at that speed. After 12 months, they reduce your speed to just 5Mbps for the entire second year, and if you cannot convince the customer service representative to renew and reset your 50Mbps contract for an additional year, there is nothing you can do about it.”

THE Internet Overcharger

Cable ONE has written the book on usage limits. Customers paying for “blazing fast 50Mbps speed” get to consume a maximum of just 50GB per month (100GB for triple play customers) before overlimit fees of $0.50/GB kick in. Other Cable ONE plans include daily usage limits of just 3GB, which can make Netflix viewing difficult.

“Cable ONE makes you ration your Internet like satellite providers do, and it’s very irritating because they tease you with fast speeds you literally cannot use unless you are willing to pay a lot more,” Jeff says.

The alternative for most Idahoans is DSL, if Qwest/CenturyLink provides it. In many areas, they don’t.

“You can be a mile out of Pocatello’s city center and be told there is no DSL, and those that do get it often find it working at 1-3Mbps,” he adds.

In a country now rated 25th in terms of Internet speed, Idaho is comparatively a bottom-rated broadband disaster area. The state secured 11 federal broadband grants to deliver some level of service in communities across the state, at a cost of $25 million.

The Slow Lane

But ask some local officials about the quality of broadband in Idaho and you find a lot of denial there is even a problem.

The Times got a brusque response to their inquiries about broadband service from the executive director for the Bannock Development Corp., a business development group. Gynii Gilliam told the newspaper things were just fine, at least for large businesses in cities like Pocatello.

“The last thing I need is a report that says we don’t have the capacity and speed, when I know it exists,” Gilliam said. She noted that Allstate Insurance was opening a $22 million call center in Pocatello and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a service center there. “We have not lost any business because of Internet speeds,” she said.

Which proves the old adage that you can have just about anything, for the right price. The disparity between residential and business broadband — urban and rural — is particularly acute in mountain west states like Idaho. Verizon was considering rural Wyoming for a multi-billion dollar high speed Internet data center, until it found it could purchase an alternative already up and running elsewhere. Meanwhile, much of the rest of Wyoming has no Internet, slow speed wireless or DSL, or limited cable broadband in some larger communities.

Even Gilliam admitted her home broadband account was nothing like the service Allstate Insurance was likely getting.

“It feels like it’s moving in slow motion,” she told the Times. “A lot of times I’ll start downloads and not complete them.” She said she was happy as long as she could get e-mail.

But not everyone is satisfied with an Internet experience limited to occasional web browsing and e-mail.

Qwest (now CenturyLink), is Idaho's largest Internet Service Provider.

“With countries like Latvia getting better broadband than we have, it’s only a matter of time before we start to lose even more jobs in the digital economy over this,” Jeff says. “This is one more nail in the coffin for rural economies in the west, which are being asked to compete with bigger cities and eastern states that have much better infrastructure.”

Pando found the northeast and mid-Atlantic states, excepting Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, have the best broadband speeds in the country. The mountain west has the worst.

Rural states like Montana, the Dakotas, eastern Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah are the least likely to have widespread access to cable broadband, which can typically offer several times the Internet speed found in smaller communities with DSL service from dominant provider Qwest (now CenturyLink). CenturyLink claims 92 percent of their customers have some access to broadband, but didn’t say at what speeds or how many customers actually subscribe to the service.

In Idaho, cost remains a factor, so CenturyLink is planning to sell low-income households a discounted DSL package. Speeds and pricing were not disclosed.

Jeff says the real issue is one of value.

“Some in the Times article blame lack of access, while others claim it’s all about the cost, but it’s really more a question of ‘is it worth paying this much for the service we actually get’,” Jeff says.

“Cable ONE is simply deal-with-it Internet, with usage caps and contract traps that leave customers feeling burned, but their only other choice is Qwest, and they show few signs of caring about delivering fast broadband in this state,” Jeff says.

“I believe CenturyLink Idaho’s vice president and general manager Jim Schmit when he says, ‘We’re in business to make a profit,’ Jeff concludes. “There isn’t a lot of profit in selling Internet service in rural mountain states, so the company simply doesn’t offer it where they won’t make back their investment quickly.”

“The question is, should profit be the only thing driving broadband deployment in the United States? If you answer ‘yes,’ Idaho is the result. If you answer ‘no,’ and think it is an essential utility, profit shouldn’t be the only consideration.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cable ONE’s ad for 50Mbps leaves out a lot, including the 50GB usage cap and two-year contracts that downgrade service to just 5Mbps for the entire second year. (1 minute)

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