Shaw is ripping the wires out of its analog FM cable radio service, formerly delivered free of charge to all Shaw subscribers.

Shaw Communications’ plans to abandon its analog cable FM radio service, delivered free of charge to basic Shaw subscribers, has been met with resistance by customers who appreciated the improved reception the service delivered.

Some noted Shaw is eliminating the free service and replacing it with one that requires a digital cable subscription to receive. Shaw:

Shaw previously offered customers access to FM radio stations free of charge with their coax cable connection, as part of their Shaw service. Given that many of our customers no longer use these stations, we are in the process of removing this service across our systems.

Removing FM radio stations allows us to free up additional bandwidth, which means Shaw can deliver faster Internet speeds, increased High-Definition content and more Shaw Exo On Demand programming. This change is part of Shaw’s dedication to providing our customers with leading edge technology through our superior Shaw Exo network.

How can I access my radio stations?

The problem with both of Shaw’s options, according to readers who have contacted Stop the Cap!, is that they come at an added cost.

“Shaw would love it if we streamed those radio stations, which all count against our bandwidth cap, instead of listening to them for free on the cable radio,” says Irene Delasquay from Prince George, B.C. “Galaxie is just a music jukebox service that requires you to buy a digital cable subscription and rent a box to listen, and I don’t want all that extra equipment and expense.”

Some wonder why Shaw is discontinuing the service in the first place. Shirley and Meg Bonney told the Comox Valley Echo:

When we finally we able to speak to a person at Shaw we were told that they “didn’t think that many people were using the FM frequencies”. Had they ever inquired? Had they even tried to find out? Or had they just made a biased assumption – perhaps to try to force people to buy their digital black box in order to access even more of their own, commercial music channels?

We were also told that the CBC frequencies were a “gift” from Shaw.

Many readers who have been in touch with Shaw are being told their best alternative is streaming radio signals over a personal computer, but that presents a problem for some who don’t have a personal computer, have located it in an inconvenient room to listen, or who do not want to waste electricity running a computer just to listen to the radio.

While cable radio is no longer common in many parts of the United States, the vast expanse of Canada combined with an often-insufficient network of low-powered FM repeater transmitters, has made reception of commercial and certain public radio signals difficult, especially inside homes.

Roger and Isabel Thomas feel the loss hurts their ability to stay in touch with informative programming long-abandoned by commercial stations and cable networks:

The FM service provided us with daylong (and night-time) enjoyable, culturally stimulating, commercial free listening. It kept us abreast of national and world-wide events and allowed us to enjoy our selection of favourite music, eclectic though it may have been.

No related stories.

Rogers Communications has following up its “Next is Now” corporate video from 2010 with a sequel: “Next is Now… More Than Ever,” which highlights how Canadians are increasingly relying on mobile communications for news, entertainment, social life, work, and education.

While Rogers wanted the video to promote how the company would be a part of that telecommunications transformation, many of their customers can’t help but reflect on the fact the revolution is well-tempered with Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps.

Stop the Cap! reader Alex is among them, noting the video says nothing about the company’s restrictive usage limits on home broadband and the even harsher caps on its mobile services.

Rogers, like most telecommunications companies, repeatedly tells investors there is real money to be made attaching meters to monetize megabytes.  Charging for broadband usage is a growth industry, and with the company’s own projections for data growth, they are well-positioned to be in the money for years.

With broadband dependency being as pervasive, if not more so, in Canada as in the United States, the barely regulated services on offer in both countries often come at a steep (and increasing) price — all for something even Rogers hints is becoming a utility — one as important as electricity, gas, and clean water.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rogers Communications’ “Next is Now… More Than Ever” has broader implications than the company realizes. (3 minutes)

Other coverage you may enjoy:

1. Rogers’ Usage Limbo Dance Continues: Company Slightly Raises Cap It Slashed Last Year
2. Netflix to Launch Unlimited Streaming for Canadians Stuck With Limited Broadband
3. Rogers Abandoning Portable Internet Service: Internet Overcharging 3G in Rural Canada’s Future
4. Updated: Rogers’ Believe It Or Not: We Will “Abolish” Usage Caps If They “Affect Users”
5. What Spectrum Crunch? Rogers Caps Your Data Usage But Plans Unlimited LTE Video-on-Demand

Happy Days Are Always Here for Top Telecom Execs

Our friends at Fierce Cable put together a list of the top-paid telecommunications executives, and they’re in the money. Your money. While your rates keep going up, their take-home pay often is, too.

Remarkably, actual performance as executives (or lack, thereof) often had no relationship to their ultimate pay package, with a handful of exceptions:

Cable & Satellite

Brian L. Roberts, Comcast — $26.9 million: The Roberts family has dominated Comcast since the 1980s, so it is no surprise their pay packages are as colossal as the company itself.

Michael J. Lovett, Charter Communications — $20.54 million: He resigned in Feb. 2012 but got a great golden parachute: nearly double the compensation he earned the year before. Charter is one of America’s least-distinguished cable companies, usually scoring just above “pond scum” in popularity with customers. But you can take that trash talk when you walk $20 million to the bank.

Glenn A. Britt, Time Warner Cable — $16.43 million: His pay went down slightly (well, by a million dollars but with that kind of money, does it really matter?) in 2011. Britt has been around at some iteration of Time since 1972… when Nixon was still president, so he worked his way to the top. But some of his best accomplishments are irritating his customers with talk of overcharging them for Internet access.

James L. Dolan, Cablevision — $11.45 million: The Dolan family and Cablevision go together like cookies and milk, but Wall Street can’t help but bet when the family will finally cash out of cable and sell the company to Time Warner or Comcast. With $11 million in salary, stock awards, and bonuses, what’s the hurry?

Joseph Clayton, Dish Network — $9.84 million: Clayton is a Dish freshman, only coming on board 11 months ago. His salary was a paltry $467,000 in 2011. Thank goodness for the $9 mil in stock and bonus pay!

Michael D. White, DirecTV — $5.94 million: Ouch… a pay cut. White made $32.93 million the year before. Now he’ll have to clip coupons from the Sunday newspaper like the rest of us.

Rodger L. Johnson, Knology — $3.13 million: Not bad for running a company almost nobody has heard of and will soon no longer exist.  WideOpenWest bought them out last month.

The Wireline Companies & Their Friends

Stephenson: Blew a $39 billion dollar merger deal with T-Mobile, but walks away with $22 million in pay anyway.

Lowell McAdam, Verizon — $23.1 million: McAdam’s promotion paid handsomely. As former chief operating officer, he only walked home with a little more than $7 million last year. Now he’s earning every penny conjuring up ways he can do away with your cell phone subsidy -and- keep Verizon Wireless’ rates as high as ever.

Randall Stephenson, AT&T — $22.01 million: If you blew a multi-billion dollar merger deal at your company, do you think the only punishment you’d receive is a $5 million pay cut? Stephenson is the cat that fell out of the wireless merger window, and landed on his feet unharmed. Unfortunately the same isn’t true for his customers.

Dan Hesse, Sprint — $11.88 million: His pay is down about $2 million from 2010, and he recently announced he was going to take another pay cut for the team. If anyone deserves hazard pay, Hesse is the man. Wall Street hates him for not following his competitors gouging customers with higher prices and more restrictive service plans and policies. The big money crowd in New York’s financial district already has his going away party well-planned.

Jeff Gardner, Windstream — $9.78 million: His pay is up around $2 million. Windstream can afford it, acquiring companies later stripped clean of employees. PAETEC workers will learn this lesson soon enough. At Windstream, all the money rises to the top… management that is.

George A. Cope, Bell Canada — $9.6 million: His salary more than doubled over 2010 and why not. Bell is the first telecommunications company in North America to be audacious enough to demand an entire country be stripped of flat rate Internet service. That move managed to organize 500,000 Canadians that normally are resigned to the fact the revolving door at the Canadian Radio-tv and Telecommunications Commission has locked them out for years. Thanks Bell!

Glen F. Post III, CenturyLink — $8.55 million: Post saw his pay slashed from $14.5 million the year before, but merger deals like Qwest (with the corresponding huge bonus for pulling it off) only come once or twice in a career.

Hesse: Wall Street's least-wanted.

Maggie Wilderotter, Frontier — $6.72 million: No, we don’t understand it either. Her pay is down from $8.58 million, but considering Frontier’s current stock price and bottom-rated service, wouldn’t half of this money be better spent on improving broadband in states like West Virginia?

John F. Cassidy, Cincinnati Bell — $6.06 million: Cassidy earned more than two million more the year before. Cincinnati Bell is an aberration in an industry that is convinced the only good thing telecom companies can do is merge with each other to get bigger and bigger.

Paul H. Sunu, FairPoint — $4.25 million: The company that couldn’t find one customer’s business on a service call despite being literally right next door to FairPoint itself, is clawing its way back from bankruptcy and Sunu’s pay package reflects that. He only earned $775,000 the year earlier.

Ian Paul Livingston, BT — $3.8 million: British Telecom’s chief got a modest salary hike in 2011, and the U.K. phone company has done modestly better recognizing better broadband in the key to its future. BT is the AT&T of the United Kingdom, but British salaries are downright frugal compared to the high flyers on this side of the Atlantic.

David A. Wittwer, TDS Telecom — $2.29 million: You can’t complain about a cool $2 million in salary for a company with only around 1.1 million customers.

Ben Verwaayen, Alcatel-Lucent — $2.25 million: His salary dropped slightly from 2010. Alcatel-Lucent could do considerably better if they can win the public policy debate that fiber optic broadband is the wave of the future. Alcatel-Lucent is a major player.

No related stories.

This monopole cell tower antenna just showed up one day in the backyard of this Kirkland, PQ resident.

Rogers Communications installed a 49-foot monopole cellular antenna in the backyard of a Kirkland, Que. resident earlier this year, but the only signals being transmitted are discussions over its fate at town hall.

Residents were furious when a neighbor leased out a portion of a residential backyard to Rogers, who claims the small cube antenna mounted on the pole will improve cell reception in the immediate area. Ever since Stop the Cap! first covered this story earlier this year, local officials have been flummoxed about what they can do about the antenna, which is currently non-operational.

“For now (there is) no resolution, but talks are progressing,” Kirkland’s director general Joe Sanalitro told The West Island Gazette. “We are demanding it come down.”

Rogers and Kirkland officials have been meeting about the antenna, which has generated considerable interest and complaints over whether the company used a zoning loophole to sneak the antenna into the neighborhood.

If allowed to stand, residents fear Rogers and other cell companies could offer cash incentives to other homeowners to erect similar towers, increasing visual pollution.

Industry Canada rules state towers less than 15 meters are excluded from municipal notification rules and do not require permits to install.  Rogers was evidently aware of this rule — its Kirkland antenna tops out at 14.5 meters, just shy of the height limit.

No related stories.

Bell Mobility and its parent company, Bell Canada are facing a $100 million class action lawsuit that claims expiration dates on Bell’s prepaid wireless service are illegal.

Ontario’s Consumer Protection Act bans expiration dates from gift cards.  The Toronto law firm of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP alleges that prepaid wireless services, often topped up with prepaid cards, should be treated just like gift cards and not subject to expiration dates that wipe out available balances.

The suit was filed on behalf of Celia Sankar of Elliot Lake, Ont.

Sankar is founder of the DiversityCanada Foundation, a non-profit group that fights for diversity, inclusion and harmony among Canadians. Sankar had her Bell Mobility prepaid balances wiped out on two occasions because she did not use her available balance or “top-up” her account with additional funds within the time window specified by Bell.

A $15 Bell Mobility prepaid top-up card expires in 30 days. A $25 top-up card expires in 60 days. Customers can buy a $100 card and avoid losing their balance for one year. Accounts with a $0 balance for 120 days will be terminated.

“Because the prepaid wireless service is the least expensive way to have a phone, and does not require a credit card or a bank account, it is often the only option for youth, new immigrants, workers on minimum wage, the unemployed, people on disability and seniors on fixed incomes,” Sankar said. “These are the people who can least afford to have their funds forfeited or to have their mobile services cut off.”

Bell declared the suit was without merit and intends to fight it.

If the case is certified as a class-action suit, Bell faces the prospect of defending itself against all Ontario residents who have used Bell’s prepaid services since May 4, 2010. Those brands include Bell Mobility, Solo Mobile, and Virgin Mobile Canada.

Other coverage you may enjoy:

1. Verizon Wireless Fraudulently Pumped Up Prepaid Numbers, New Lawsuit Claims
2. Canada’s Cellular Cartel: 3 Wireless Companies Control 94 Percent of the Market
3. Canadians Trash Their Cell Phone Options: Bad Service, Worse Value; Koodo Rates Highest
4. Competition Bureau Fines Bell $10 Million for Misleading Consumers About Pricing
5. T-Mobile Prepaid Deal Brings Down Online Ordering System As Customers Beat Down the Doors

Vidéotron, Quebec’s largest cable operator, is secretly filming some of their technicians on fake service calls to verify they are providing professional service to the company’s customers.

But instead of keeping the results to themselves, the company is publishing the resulting videos to their website for customers to enjoy.

A total of 21 technicians were put to the test, and the company set up some outrageous challenges for them to overcome, starting with a single woman trying to convince her mother the technician was her boyfriend, with comical results.

While we are unlikely to see the Vidéotron technicians that failed the tests, the company has launched a publicity campaign to praise itself for excellent service.

“Our conscientious technicians are ambassadors for Vidéotron and its values,” said Manon Brouillette, president of consumer markets. “We are very proud of them. They have achieved an impressive 96% customer satisfaction rate and this campaign is a tip of the hat to their great work.”

Putting technicians to the test, especially those working for third-party subcontractors, might not be a bad idea for some U.S. cable companies to try, especially after some of those technicians were later arrested for sexual assault, theft, and other crimes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Watch Vidéotron’s first edition of its hidden camera trap for company technicians, when a single woman gets in over her head with a little white lie.  (2 minutes)

No related stories.

Shaw Cable has pulled the plug on its complimentary cable radio service on Vancouver Island, which used to provide enhanced FM reception of radio services from across the province and from the United States.

Listeners in the Vancouver area never received notification the service was being terminated, and a Shaw spokesman said the company did not bother because it was a free service delivered to cable customers.

Some listeners called the loss of more than 20 FM stations devastating, leaving them with as few as three clear stations, and no reception of CBC Radio 2 from Canada’s public radio network.

Kerry Hunt, Shaw’s regional manager for Vancouver Island, said the company is phasing out the FM radio service in order to increase Internet speeds and make room for additional digital cable channels.

“Nobody is installing FM anymore,” Hunt told Canada.com. “It’s just a service that is very rarely even being used.”

Gone for some B.C. listeners

Hunt called cable radio anachronistic in the digital and Internet age, and those customers who value the service are now being pushed to use Internet streaming services, offered by many of the stations listeners lost. But those streams count against the company’s Internet Overcharging usage caps, and with many of cable radio’s fans among the less-computer-savvy elderly, the expense to add broadband service to continue listening to radio stations they used to receive for free is a hardship.

Cable radio service is a legacy service, originally introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to provide enhanced radio service to cable-TV subscribers over cable-wired FM receivers. Some cable systems delivered national radio superstations, college stations not available over the air, or distant regional radio signals not well received by cable subscribers.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission used to require all Canadian cable operators provide the service, converting all area AM signals for FM reception. Those rules have been considerably relaxed, and today most cable operators deliver the bare minimum, including one CBC Radio service, over its set top cable boxes.

Shaw says it plans to gradually discontinue cable radio service across its entire coverage area.

No related stories.

Rogers Video closed for business, watch pay-per-view instead.

Rogers Communications closed the last of its remaining video stores nationwide this week, eliminating around 300 jobs.

The last of 93 stores still renting videos have been in “liquidation mode” since April, clearing rental DVDs and other videos, selling them to customers on an as-is basis.  This week, the last of that inventory was sold (or thrown out), and Canada has lost its last national video rental chain.

In 2011, Blockbuster Canada closed hundreds of its own stores, leaving some communities with no video rental retail outlets at all.

That suits Canada’s cable and phone companies just fine, as they bolster their own pay-per-view offerings, which typically come at higher rental prices.

The video rental business has done poorly in the United States as well, at least until Redbox arrived with its omnipresent video rental kiosks found outside of coffee shops, drugstores, grocers, and other retailers. Redbox charges discount rental rates from its automated vending machines, keeping the price much lower than pay-per-view offerings from cable and phone companies. That has kept earnings for traditional pay-per-view depressed in the United States.  Canadians are only now being introduced to video rental kiosks, starting in Ontario.

Rogers says it intends to keep its retail outlets open, but refocus them on selling the company’s wireless and cable television products.

[Updated: 5:24pm EDT -- A Rogers spokesperson has clarified its position on video rental stores, saying in part, "While we’re no longer offering DVD and game rentals at our retail locations we’re not closing any stores. We’re not laying off any employees at these stores. We’re repurposing all locations to better serve our customers. This will include offering wireless sales and service in all locations as well as cable sales and service in many of those locations."

The "300 jobs" statistic noted above was part of an earlier, unrelated layoff announcement. -- pd]

Other coverage you may enjoy:

1. Canadian Telecom Giants Outwit Would-Be Cord Cutters; Alternatives Also Under Pressure
2. Rogers Communications Decides It is Big Enough to Start Its Own Bank
3. What Spectrum Crunch? Rogers Caps Your Data Usage But Plans Unlimited LTE Video-on-Demand
4. Blockbuster Files for Bankruptcy; Wipes Out Shareholders But Keeps Stores, Rent-by-Mail Service Open
5. Rogers Communications Set to Layoff 300 Workers

Bell Canada has boosted speeds of its fiber-to-the-neighborhood and fiber-to-the-home Fibe Internet services in Ontario.  But our regular reader Alex notes Bell’s Internet Overcharging usage cap scheme remains firmly in place, which leaves customers taking the company’s fastest offerings out for little more than a test drive before the overlimit fees kick in.

But no worries, Bell says.  The company has invented the concept of Internet Usage Insurance, selling you extra usage allotments ranging from 20GB ($5) to 125GB ($25) per month for usage that costs Bell just pennies per gigabyte.

The new speeds are admittedly very fast, but their value is well-tempered by the usage allowances that accompany them.

Other coverage you may enjoy:

1. Bell Quietly Boosts Usage Caps for New Fibe Customers While Alienating Existing Ones
2. Bell’s Limbo Dance — Company Lowers Usage Caps, Raises Max Overlimit Fee to $80
3. Silver and Gold: Wringing Customers Dry With Bell Holiday Rate Hikes & Higher Penalties
4. Limbo Dance Redux: Bell Canada Lowers Usage Allowances on Customers, But Sells Usage Insurance for “Peace of Mind”
5. Telus Raises Usage Allowances and Speeds; Anti-Usage Billing Movement Scores Victory

Maybe not

Telus Corporation’s no-contract cell phone subsidiary Koodo billed a mentally disadvantaged Vancouver-area teen $8,000 in “premium texting” charges it claims are supposed to be capped at $500 a month.

Nineteen year-old Brandon Kobza, born with fetal alcohol syndrome and other disabilities, found himself in the hole with Koodo after signing up for a text-dating service that costs up to $2 per message.

Kobza obtained his Koodo cell phone with the help of Ben Woodman, a Burnaby church youth worker, who ended up putting the phone in his name with the understanding there would be strict limits on the account.  Kobza earns just $900 a month, mostly from social welfare benefits for the physically and mentally challenged.

“I said, ‘You know I don’t want any data or extra charges’ and Koodo said, ‘We can block that.’ I made sure he had unlimited texts,” Woodman told CBC News. “I put a lot of faith in Koodo. I’m asking the representative ‘What can go wrong ? Can I get charged for anything else?’ And they said nothing about premium texts.”

Kobza learned about a text-based dating company from a friend who claimed it would allow him to meet girls, and one named “Katya” promptly began text flirting with him several times a day… at $2 a message.

Kobza never got to meet Katya, if she actually existed, but a month and half of virtual dating turned out to be mighty expensive.  By the time Woodman had the premium text messages cut off, Kobza had managed to exchange more than 4,100 text messages for $8,243.  The actual cost to Telus to deliver that number of text messages runs in the pennies.

The first of two Koodo bills

Woodman canceled the phone and requested a refund, but Koodo initially refused, offering an 80% discount instead.  But Koodo’s own policies are supposed to limit premium texting fees to $500 a month, in part to deal with the explosive number of complaints from customers about unjustified or misunderstood premium text charges.  In Kobza’s case, youtext.com apparently ignored Koodo’s rules for third party vendors and kept the charges coming.

After Woodman and Kobza got nowhere with Koodo, both decided to go public and contact CBC News, who promptly found the telecom “Pass the Buck ‘n Blame“-game in full force.

Koodo customer service representatives and kiosk employees both disassociated themselves with premium texting, claiming the cell phone company considers the vendors a nuisance because of complaints from customers. Representatives even denied Koodo takes a cut of the proceeds, which turned out to be untrue.  They referred customers back to youtext.com who promptly sends complainers back to the cell phone company.

The mysterious "Katya" Kobza paid $2 for every virtual text "date"

Premium texting charges are often unwittingly incurred by customers who enter their mobile number on unfamiliar websites or advertisements for things like dating services or “joke of the day” messages.  Only in the fine print, when disclosed, do consumers learn these texts can run several dollars each, and many only find out when the first bill arrives.

Youtext does send reminder text messages warning customers that charges are incurred for their services, but Woodman said Kobza simply didn’t comprehend what they meant.

Neither do many other Canadians, who file hundreds of complaints a year against premium texting services with the commissioner for complaints for telecom services.

Regulators say phone companies do earn a percentage of every premium text message billed, and with companies acting as both billing agent and collector, they have a vested interest in the profits reaped when customers pay their bills. That makes waivers for bill shock incidents more difficult than they should be, consumer advocates complain.

A Koodo spokesperson told CBC News the texting charges should have been forgiven immediately, and in full.  After CBC News got involved, the charges were removed from Woodman’s bill altogether.

Consumer advocates say Canadian cell phone companies should allow consumers to automatically block all premium text messaging services.  Currently, Rogers Communications is the only provider that uniformly provides this service.  Koodo says it is working on a premium text message blocker for its customers, and has been in touch with youtext.com regarding its violation of Koodo’s $500 limit on premium texting charges.

In the meantime, consumers should avoid entering their mobile numbers on websites for any advertised services, especially for ringtones, voicemail services, conference calling, dating, and “information services” automatically sent to your phone. Most of these services come at premium prices, billed by your cell phone company.

Click here to view the embedded video.

CBC News in British Columbia intervened to help a mentally-disadvantaged teenager find a solution to more than $8,000 in texting charges that should have never been billed.  (2 minutes)

Other coverage you may enjoy:

1. Canadians Trash Their Cell Phone Options: Bad Service, Worse Value; Koodo Rates Highest
2. Gouge Train: AT&T Wireless Eliminates Budget Texting Plans: Welcome to $20+ Texting
3. Verizon Confusion: Is Verizon Redefining Texting Plans to Mean Only Plain Text Messages?
4. TxtMsg Ripoff: OMG, Cell Phone Provider Sends $500 Bill to Texting Teen’s Dad for Data That Costs Them A Penny to Deliver
5. Updated: Bright House Charges $20 “Collection Fee” When They Call About Past-Due Bills