Phillip “I Shop Online” Dampier

Last week, JCPenney launched their nationwide redemption tour, apologizing to millions of ex-customers that fled the former retail giant, begging them to come back.

It took over a year for JCPenney to get the message that “disciplining” and “re-educating” customers to accept the wisdom of everyday higher prices with few sales and almost no coupons was hardly the door-busting success “miracle worker” CEO Ron Johnson originally had in mind. The ex-Apple executive was rewarded a $52.7 million signing bonus to take over JCPenney’s tired leadership and in return he dragged sales down 28.4% from the year before, with same store sales down 32%. Johnson’s new vision also steamrolled one-third of JCPenney’s online business.

The day those results became known, he confidently showed Wall Street he did not dwell in the reality-based community: “I’m completely convinced that our transformation is on track!” (For Kohl’s benefit anyway.)

Johnson also believed in a “less is more” philosophy in human resources, overseeing layoffs of 13 percent of the company’s workforce last April, with another 350 let go in July.

Despite the fact his all-new, rebooted vision of JCPenney was about as popular as bird flu, he stayed, even as customers and employees didn’t.

It wasn’t that the company didn’t know customers had a problem with all this. Many complained about the radical, unwanted changes at JCPenney, particularly middle-aged professional women representing one of the stores’ most important business segments. Company executives simply didn’t listen.

A year later, some of the same analysts that cheered JCPenney’s crackdown on discounting now wonder if the company will survive 2013. Many fretted about the real possibility the last customer to brave the “new era” of JCP might forget to turn the lights out when they left for good. Others were mostly furious the board let Johnson go.

Despite the tragic consequences, the conventional wisdom on Wall Street remains: Alienating customers with a revamp nobody asked for and “everyday pricing” designed to boost profits every day was not the problem, how Johnson implemented the strategy was. He just didn’t educate customers enough.

We see the same warped thinking in the broadband marketplace, particularly with usage caps, consumption billing, junk fees and the general ever-increasing price of broadband itself.

On providers’ quarterly results conference calls, the regular questions challenging leaders of the industry are not about providers charging too much for too little. The real concern is that your ISP is leaving too much ripe fruit on the tree:

• Where is the revenue-boosting usage caps and consumption billing, Time Warner Cable?
• Comcast: can’t you raise prices further on those recent speed increases to maximize additional revenue?
• Verizon: why are you spending so much on fiber broadband upgrades customers love when that money could have gone back to shareholders?
• AT&T: Is there anything else you can do to exploit your market share and make even more money from costly data plans?

The best ways a consumer can reward a good broadband provider include remaining a loyal customer, paying your bill on time and upgrading to faster speeds as needed. For Wall Street, the growing demand for broadband is a sign there is plenty of wiggle room for at-will rate increases, new fees and surcharges, contract tricks and traps, customer service cuts, and monetizing usage wherever possible. After all, you probably won’t cancel because the other guy in town is doing the same thing.

This is what sets the broadband marketplace of today apart from most retailers: consumers don’t have 10-20 other choices to take their business to if they are fed up.

Comcast or AT&T? Both charge a lot and have usage limits on their broadband service for no good reason. Your other alternatives? A wireless provider charging even more with an even lower usage cap. Or you can always go without.

While providers may tell you there is a healthy, competitive broadband marketplace, Wall Street knows better. When Time Warner Cable recently announced it would dramatically curtail new customer promotions and concentrate on delivering fewer services for more money, nobody bothered asking whether this would result in a stampede to the competition. What competition?

Although Google is delivering much-needed, game-changing competition in a tiny handful of cities, most Americans will not benefit because the best upgrades and lowest prices are only available where Google threatens the status quo. A larger number of municipalities are done putting their broadband (and economic) future in the hands of the phone and cable company and are building their own digital infrastructure for the good of their communities.

For everyone else, we can dream that one day, someday, the cable and phone company most Americans do business with will be forced to run their own JCPenney-like apology tour for years of abusive pricing and mediocre “good enough for you” broadband with unwarranted usage limits. Time Warner Cable went half way, but until competition or oversight forces some dramatic changes, we should not count on providers to actually listen to what customers want. They don’t believe they need to listen to earn or keep your business.

Other stories of interest:

1. Time Warner Cable’s Broadband Pricing Game: Special Wall-Street-At-Home Edition
2. Craig “Data Cap” Moffett Leaves Sanford Bernstein Wall Street Firm to Start His Own
3. Wall Street Journal’s Distorted Views on Broadband Only See the Industry’s Point of View
4. Time Warner Cable Loses 15% of Their Analog Cable Customers; News on Broadband Caps, Pricing
5. Time Warner Cable Pulling Back Hard on Promotions: New Customers Will Pay More for Less

After more than a year of aggressive promotions for new customers and those threatening to switch to a competitor, Time Warner Cable has pulled back to boost revenue and make greater profits.

CEO Glenn Britt told Wall Street investors on this morning’s quarterly results conference call that the cable operator is moving in a different direction.

“It’s based on a simple premise: sell people what they want and what they can afford in the first place,” Britt said.

In February, Stop the Cap! noted that Time Warner Cable’s new customer promotions had dramatically changed for the worse. The package prices remained the same — around $80 for a double-play or $89-99 for a triple-play package of cable, broadband, and/or phone service, but customers received a lot less for their money. For example, last year’s promotions bundled Standard/Turbo Service broadband (10-15Mbps) with most offers. Starting this year, only 3Mbps Internet is included. Equipment fees are still extra, but more costly than ever – $8.99 a month for a traditional set-top box, $21.94 a month for a DVR-equipped box and service.

Robert Marcus, Time Warner Cable’s chief operating officer now admits it was all part of the plan, and the company now earns 15-20% more from customers subscribing to the less-aggressive new customer promotions.

“In January we implemented a new pricing and packaging architecture that’s designed to drive greater [new customer revenue] and profit,” Marcus told investors. “We still advertise the same beacon prices, but the product packages are leaner, with lower speeds and fewer channels and features. Once our beacon offers get the phone to ring, our inbound sales reps are trained to help customers select options that are important to them, like faster broadband or a DVR. As a result, customers are up-sold into packages that better meet their needs.”

This year’s promotions largely only bundle 3Mbps broadband instead of the standard 10-15Mbps bundled last year.

Marcus admitted the trade-off is customers shopping around for the best deal who read the fine print are likely to consider an offer from a competitor more closely. Others are disconnecting service when their promotion expires.

Marcus

“By and large, when were talking about triple play disconnects, they are going to our telco competitors,” Marcus said. “When we’re talking about single-play video disconnects, they, by and large, leave us for satellite. We’re increasingly finding that phone customers are dropping landline phone for wireless-only, and there are video customers who are leaving — and broadband customers for that matter, who are leaving the category, and that’s probably more of an affordability issue than anything else.”

Verizon FiOS is Time Warner’s most dangerous competitor because it beats the cable operator on broadband speed and promotional pricing. Time Warner faces some of the highest disconnect numbers in FiOS areas. AT&T U-verse is also having a greater impact because AT&T recently decreased the price of both their triple and double-play promotions and has increased broadband speeds in some areas, Marcus reported.

Marcus said Time Warner is handling the subscriber churn fine, and the cable company now cares more about higher revenue and profits than attracting deal-hunters who shop on price.

“Last year’s aggressive triple play offers drove significant connect volume, which led to the highest quarterly subscriber net adds we’ve had over the last several years,” Marcus said. “But in large part, we were attracting discount seekers who are more likely to [switch after the promotion ended]. In many cases, we caused customers who didn’t need or want phone to take a triple play offer just to get the low triple play rates.”

What new customers Time Warner did attract largely took one or two products from the cable company, usually cable television and broadband. New phone service customers have declined year-over-year as a result of less attractive pricing. Instead, Marcus noted customers are spending on incremental broadband speed upgrades, which cost Time Warner much less than delivering phone service.

Nobody needs 1Gbps, argues Britt.

With the looming threat of Google Fiber in both Kansas City and Austin, Britt seemed generally unconcerned about the impact the gigabit broadband provider would have.

“At the end of the day, what we’re doing is not any different than an overbuilder, and we’ve had overbuilders for the last several decades in this business so that’s what they appear to be doing,” Britt said. “They appear to be very aggressive on price. They’re even giving some tiers away essentially for free, and we’ll see where that goes. Despite the glow and all of that, the products are essentially the same others are offering today in a practical sense.”

Britt said gigabit speeds probably won’t have the impact many customers think they should because most websites are not built to deliver content at those speeds.

Marcus noted that in Kansas City, Google has only passed 4,000 homes so far, about 2,000 of which are Time Warner Cable customers.

“The number of defections we’ve seen is de minimis at this point,” Marcus said.

Both Britt and Marcus responded to a question about consumption billing saying nothing had changed in the company’s thinking about usage caps or charging for what customers consumed.

“We have in place in almost all of our footprint the option for people to pay less money if they wish to really consume less,” Britt said. “People who want to keep getting unlimited and pay for that, can do that. So we really don’t have anything new. It is in place in our whole footprint, I think, except one location.”

“The take rate on that offering has still been fairly modest, but we think it’s a very important principle that there’s a relationship between usage and the price that customers pay,” Marcus added.

Some other highlights:

• Time Warner Cable’s cloud-based set-top box guide is now testing in employee homes with plans to roll the new boxes out to subscribers later this year. Britt said these were the first of a new generation of all-IP boxes, which means if you have a device in your house that knows how to receive IP, you’ll get access directly via WiFi or through a cable technology called MoCA;
• Time Warner Cable will digitally encrypt its entire television lineup in New York City;
• Time Warner Cable’s recent restructuring cost 500 employees their jobs, mostly in finance, marketing and human resources.

Other stories of interest:

1. Time Warner Cable Loses 15% of Their Analog Cable Customers; News on Broadband Caps, Pricing
2. Time Warner Cable Will Increase Standard Broadband Speed to 15/1Mbps Nationwide
3. Big Cable Running Scared: Comcast/Time Warner Cable Promotions Can Save Customers A Fortune
4. Competition Breather: Verizon FiOS Rate Hikes Ease Pressure on Cablevision, TWC
5. Digging Deeper Into Time Warner Cable’s 2011 Results and What Is Coming in 2012

Cable One has announced it will invest $60 million in network upgrades across 42 cable systems in its mostly rural footprint to enhance reliability and deliver faster Internet service.

The cable operator, owned by the Washington Post, has been criticized for outdated infrastructure and poor service, particularly in Mississippi.

”We’re committed to delivering the best possible experience to our customers,” said Cable One CEO Tom Might. “We’re confident that this investment will ensure that our customers will receive superior service in the speed, reliability, and the overall performance of our services.”

The two-year upgrade project aims to replace amplifiers, split broadband customers who share a backbone connection into smaller groups, replace aging coaxial cable and improve the cable company’s fiber optic backbone.

The upgrade might allow the company to consider relaxing its draconian usage cap and speed throttle policies, which force customers to choose between an uncapped 5Mbps connection (with a speed throttle for those using more than 3GB per day) or a 50/2Mbps connection with caps as low as 50GB per month (overlimit fees: $0.50-1.00/each extra gigabyte.)

Cable One now offers two levels of Internet service: an uncapped 5Mbps plan for $50 a month and a 50/2Mbps plan for $50 a month with a 50-100GB monthly usage cap, depending on the package bundle. Usage is measured between 8am-12 midnight. Users on the uncapped 5Mbps plan are subject to speed throttling if they exceed 3GB of usage per day.

Other stories of interest:

1. Time Warner Cable Introduces DOCSIS 3 Speed Upgrades for Rural Upstate New Yorkers
2. Updated: Time Warner Cable Boosts Turbo Upload Speeds to 2Mbps in Rochester, N.Y.
3. Charter Cable Increasing Broadband Speeds, But You’ll Hit Their Caps Faster
4. New England Time Warner Cable Subs Get Free Broadband Speed Upgrade
5. 10 Turkish Cities Getting 1Gbps Broadband; Turkcell Upgrades Budget Plan to 20Mbps Service

The German Internet is functionally broken.

Deutsche Telekom, the largest telecommunications company in Germany, has announced it will introduce a brazen Internet Overcharging scheme for customers signing up for its broadband DSL service, including a throttle that reduces speeds to just 384kbps after as little as 75GB of monthly broadband usage.

For now, only new Telekom Deutschland customers signing up after May 1 will be affected by the usage limits. Customers will be offered the option of upgrading their Call & Surf package to get a larger usage allowance, although many parts of Germany are still reliant on DSL and its variants that cannot deliver the advertised speeds that go with the larger allowances:

• Up to 16Mbps: 75GB per month
• Up to 50Mbps: 200GB per month
• Up to 100Mbps: 300GB per month
• Up to 200Mbps: 400GB per month

“We want to offer customers the best network in the future and we will continue to invest billions to make that happen,” said Michael Hagspihl, marketing director of Telekom Deutschland. “However we cannot continue to sustain higher usage demand while lowering our prices. Customers with very high data volumes will have to pay more in the future.”

Company officials argue German broadband usage demands are accelerating at an ever-increasing rate, putting strain on the company’s network resources.

But critics question if usage demands are the root of the problem, why is DT exempting itself and its “preferred partners” from the data cap, including certain services that offer very high bandwidth video?

The Net Neutrality activist group Netzpolitik.org says DT is “massively violating Net Neutrality while the federal government looks away dreaming that the free market will solve the problem somehow.”

The group points out DT has admitted the speed throttle only applies to content providers who have not partnered up with the German telecom giant.

DT is exempting all of its own in-house content providers, the private television service Entertain, and telephone services (when provided by DT). For everyone else: the speed throttle gets closer the more customers use services like Apple iTunes or Amazon’s Lovefilm service. But DT says those companies can also get special treatment for the right price.

DT’s preferred partner cooperating agreements let “high quality content producers” pay for a managed services contract that guarantees exemption from the speed throttle and prioritization of their traffic on DT’s network, even if it means slowing down non-preferred partner content.

A parody future offer from DT.

“You cannot thumb your nose at Net Neutrality principles any better if you tried,” said Rene Pedersen, an Internet activist in Köln. “DT will have their emasculated two-tier Internet and all of Germany will have to suffer the consequences. Their own arguments do not even make sense. If there is a capacity crisis, how can they exempt some video providers that now consume the most network resources?”

“Until a few years ago, providers – just like the post – were just deliverers of packages,” said Netzpolitik’s Andre Masters. “This principle is called Net Neutrality – the equal treatment of data packets on the Internet, regardless of sender, recipient, or content. Now providers want to have a direct influence on the content sent, because they want to earn more money.”

Technology publisher Heise Online says the new usage restricting tariff has “triggered a veritable sh**storm” among net users who consider a 75GB usage limit untenable, particularly for families with multiple Internet users.

Heise is also critical of claims DT has made in the press that suggests German Internet users must either accept the usage caps or understand the company will have to spend at least €80 billion ($108 billion) to build a national fiber network to manage growing traffic.

In contrast, Goldman Sachs last year estimated the cost of wiring every home in the United States with Google Fiber would cost $140 billion, a number now considered inflated. Verizon FiOS managed to get costs down for its own fiber network to a level that suggests Google would only need around $90 billion — $10 billion more than DT claims it needs.

“DT is being disingenuous when they suggest it will cost €80 billion to solve their capacity problem. For that amount every household in Germany would get their own fiber cable with 200Mbps speeds or more,” Heise writes in their editorial. “To avoid slowing users down with a speed throttle, only a small fraction of this amount is needed to extend the Internet backbone and peering agreements between providers. For years network traffic has grown exponentially and DT has kept up with demand. So why does DT suddenly need to reshuffle the cards now?”

DT has also received criticism for how it has depicted its heavy users — mostly as content thieves and software pirates using file swapping networks to steal copyrighted works. But instead of dealing with copyright violations, DT wants a sweeping usage cap system that punishes every customer that wants to use their broadband connection.

“Customers are not insatiable Gierschlünde who want everything for free,” writes Heise. “They already pay a lot of money to Telekom: 12.5 million DSL customers roughly translates into around a half billion euros in sales per month.”

Back to the future.

The German news magazine Spiegel writes DT’s usage limits strangle the Internet for millions of Germans, especially for competing video providers:

When throttled, customers will need more than 23 hours to watch a DVD-quality movie. At Blu-ray resolution, it will take about two weeks to watch just one film.

[...] The implications of the end of Net Neutrality in Germany represents a form of economic censorship, and German politicians are standing by to watch it happen.

The federal government sees the Internet as a political bargaining chip and not as the social, cultural and economic tool it represents. The government acts in the interests of certain lobbyists, not Germany’s digital future. This allows German telecommunications companies to focus on their economic self-interests without government policies that demand investment in digital infrastructure.

A number of German Internet users are expected to switch to a cable provider, where available, to escape DT’s impending speed caps.

According to the Frankfurter Rundschau, many German cable companies also reserve the right to limit speeds for customers. But in practice, most don’t impose limits until traffic exceeds 60GB daily, and the speed cap is lifted the next day. A cable industry official says its cap currently impacts about 0.1 percent of customers, almost all who use peer-to-peer file swapping networks. Exempt from measurements that bring customers closer to a speed cap: web browsing, video streaming, and video-on-demand.

For now, Germany’s cable operators facing the same traffic growth DT speaks about find no need to impose further limits, stating their networks are handling the traffic with network upgrades as a normal course of business.

“It calls out DT’s claims as fraudulent, because cable Internet users visit the same websites and do the same things DT’s customers do and there only seems to be an ‘urgent’ problem in need of a speed throttle solution on BT’s network,” says Pedersen. “What needs to be throttled are the financial expectations of DT management and shareholders. The Internet is not their personal vault waiting to be plundered.”

What if Net Neutrality did not exist?  [Subtitled] (1 minute)

Other stories of interest:

1. All You Can Eat: New Zealand ISP Reintroduces Unlimited Usage Internet Service
2. CNN Mistakes Internet Overcharging for Net Neutrality
3. AT&T’s New Speed Throttle Being Used as Talking Point for Merger With T-Mobile
4. New Evidence Suggests Comcast Prioritizing Its Own Streamed Content; Usage Cap Must Go
5. Netflix Finally Wakes Up to Net Neutrality, Internet Overcharging Threat

Stop the Cap! has hammered ISPs for a long time for promising “unlimited” broadband but sneaking in “traffic management speed throttles” they call a matter of fairness and we call deceptive marketing.

Virgin Media’s UK broadband customers have just been introduced to the extreme absurdity of selling “insanely fast” fiber broadband that comes with a sneaky spreadsheet guaranteed to confuse all but the most observant byte counters.

Some customers suspect Virgin Media is just retaliating for repeated findings from British regulators that the company runs dodgy advertising that promises one thing and delivers something entirely different in the fine print. More than two dozen of their TV commercials and print advertisements have been banned for deceptive ad claims, ranging from the “fastest broadband in Britain” (not exactly) to promotions promising “free service” that actually costs around £15 a month (what is a dozen quid or so among friends).

So why does Virgin Media need traffic management? They have oversold the service to too many customers and won’t invest enough in upgrades to keep up with demand.

Network overselling is more common that you might think. ISPs understand that all of their customers will not be online at the same time, so there is only a need to provision enough bandwidth to support their assumptions about anticipated usage. If your ISP serves a gated Luddite community, it won’t need the same data pipe required to provide access along University Row. The trick is to use real science and math to correctly anticipate user demand, but many ISPs answer first to their investors, who simply hate spending good money on upgrades. Expansion proposals are about as popular as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The result is “good enough” broadband service that is susceptible to overcrowding during prime usage times.

You already know what happens next. Once the kids are home from school and dinner is finished, your online experience quickly s l  o   w    s     t    o     (buffering).

In Britain, some ISPs are notorious for overselling broadband service that advertises speeds in the dozens of megabits, but can’t even break 1Mbps during peak usage times.

How can this be fixed? With investment in upgrades. What do ISPs do instead? They slap on usage caps and “network management” speed throttles that artificially slow browsing speeds for those considered “heavy users.”

Virgin Media was supposed to be a breath of fresh air from usage caps. Instead, the company promises a truly unlimited experience, with limitations.

Virgin’s latest iteration of its “peak time usage policy” resembles a tax table from the Internal Revenue Service. Can you understand it?

Despite this, Virgin calls its broadband service “to all intents and purposes, completely unlimited.”

Where is that British regulator, again?

The company claims less than 3% of its customers will ever be affected by these limits. They might be right if customers avoid online video, downloading large files or games, cloud storage, or allowing other family members to use their connection at the same time. If one is subjected to the speed throttles, Virgin will take away nearly half of the speed customers were sold.

Here is Virgin’s position on all this:

“Our 100Mb customers receive speeds up to 104.6Mb, proven by Ofcom, and even if you’re one of the 2.3 per cent of heavy users we sometimes, temporarily traffic manage you’ll be receiving speeds of around 60Mb — so you can download and stream as much as you like.Today’s update makes it more flexible and responsive to how people are using our services and is designed to reduce the time customers may spend in traffic management, it could be just one hour. We do not have caps, nor do we charge customers more.”

That is true, but Virgin is charging a premium for broadband service speeds they are prepared to automatically take away when a customer persists in using the service they paid to receive.

Virgin could pay their experts to conjure up speed management charts like the one above, or they could invest in network upgrades that make such network management techniques unnecessary.

Other stories of interest:

1. British Regulator Tells Virgin Media to Stop Calling Limited Broadband “Unlimited”
2. Virgin Media Doubling Broadband Speeds for Free While Competitor Sky Unveils 100Gbps Internet for UK
3. Virgin Media to Game Developers: It’s All Your Fault You Assumed We Weren’t Going to Throttle You
4. Virgin Tests World’s Fastest Cable Broadband for UK: 1.5Gbps Beats Your 15Mbps Service
5. Welcome to Virgin Mobile’s Higher Calling: The 2.5GB/256kbps Usage Throttle Starts Friday

AT&T suddenly announced it was ready to build its own gigabit fiber network in Austin.

AT&T and Time Warner Cable report they are ready to make more investments in their operations in Austin, Tex. to compete with Google Fiber when it arrives in the middle of next year.

Time Warner Cable says it already operates a multi-gigabit fiber optic network — one residential customers cannot easily access or afford. Residential broadband speeds at the cable operator top out at 50/5Mbps in Austin, at a cost higher than what Google plans to charge for 1,000/1,000Mbps service. AT&T’s U-verse network maxes out at 24/3Mbps, assuming customers have good copper wiring between AT&T’s fiber in the neighborhood and their home.

“The cable and phone company providers have purposely confused their networks’ maximum speed capacity with real end-user speeds for years, and when that fails to convince they simply claim customers don’t need or want those speeds anyway,” says Stop the Cap! reader and Austin resident Sam Knoll.

Knoll is enthusiastic about giving Time Warner Cable the boot, partly to pay them back for their aborted consumption billing trial attempted in Austin in 2009.

“I am not completely convinced Time Warner Cable understands just how much damage they did to their reputation when they pulled that stunt, and I’m certain they will attempt it again if they have a chance,” Knoll said. “The best thing customers can do is switch to a provider that believes usage caps and consumption billing are the fraudulent ripoff we know them to be. Google already knows this.”

Some Time Warner Cable customers in Austin never forgot the company tried to meter Internet usage in a failed experiment back in 2009. (Image: The Austinst)

Competition from deep-pocketed Google could eventually transform the broadband business model for American providers, assuming Google builds its fiber network in enough cities to challenge the conventional wisdom that prices have plenty of room to grow with faster Internet access. The more customers that sign up for Google’s already-super-fast broadband, the more providers will have to compete with better and faster service.

But AT&T is not convinced. The company announced yesterday it was prepared to build a gigabit fiber network not just in Austin, but also in surrounding Williamson County, with plenty of caveats.

“[We will only build the network if] the demand is there and if we get the same terms and conditions as Google received,” said AT&T spokeswoman Tracy King.

AT&T told the Austin American-Statesman the company wanted a faster regulatory approval process and permission to only build its faster fiber network in neighborhoods where there is proven demand for the service. Current franchise agreements often compel providers to offer service throughout the community and prohibits “cherry-picking” customers in high-income or low construction cost areas.

An AT&T official told KEYE-TV he had no idea how much AT&T would charge for gigabit broadband. Google charges $70 a month in Kansas City.

Austin has promised cooperation with Google, although it is not extending tax breaks or grants to the search engine giant. Google will get easy access to Austin Energy’s municipally owned infrastructure including utility poles and rights-of-way.

Google is speculated to be building showcase fiber networks to embarrass incumbent cable and phone providers who typically sell standard broadband service with speeds of 6-15Mbps in most larger communities. Rural areas are lucky to have 3Mbps service, and often much less.

But if Google intended to force major upgrades by cable and phone companies across the country, it might be disappointed with the response so far from AT&T and Time Warner Cable. Both companies indicate they will invest in and upgrade their networks to compete, but only in the service areas where Google-style competition exists. For the rest of the country, phone and cable companies are prepared to continue with the current “broadband scarcity” business model that delivers upgrades only occasionally, often accompanied by usage limits, consumption billing, and/or higher prices.

“Google has proved that there is a business model for selling abundant bandwidth as opposed to a business model for allocating scarce bandwidth,” said Blair Levin, a former chief of staff of the Federal Communications Commission.

“They are saying this is not an experiment. It is a business,” Levin told the newspaper. “In Kansas City, Google did the country an enormous favor. They said, give us regulatory flexibility to design the business and give us access to city property so we can build a network to lower the cost.”

KEYE in Austin talks with AT&T about their plans for a gigabit broadband network to compete with Google Fiber. The AT&T spokesman seemed more interested in pitching the company’s deregulation agenda and was short on specifics.  (3 minutes)

http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KXAN Austin What competition will Google Fiber face 4-9-13.mp4

KXAN in Austin talked with Google competitors Time Warner Cable and AT&T about how they will respond to the Google Fiber challenge.   (3 minutes)

KVUE in Austin called Google’s entry into the city the opening salvo of ‘Fiber Wars,’ as AT&T promises its own gigabit network. Austin residents intend to take advantage of the competition to force providers to give them better deals to keep their business.  (3 minutes)

KXAN explains the possibilities of gigabit fiber, but also asks a former Google insider why the search engine is getting into the broadband business.  (5 minutes)

http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KTBC Austin Time Warner Cable Responds to Google 4-9-13.mp4

KTBC was skeptical of AT&T’s sudden interest in gigabit broadband. “Gee, what a coincidence,” commented the anchor of Austin’s Fox affiliate.  (2 minutes)

Other stories of interest:

1. Austin Media Gushing for Google Fiber
2. AT&T Announces Its Own “Gigabit Fiber Network” for Austin; Details Leave Wiggle Room
3. Back to Kansas City: Google Fiber Now Going in the Ground; TV Service Also Announced
4. Multiple Sources Confirm Austin As Next Google Fiber City; Here Are Some Clues Why
5. AT&T and Time Warner Cable: ‘We Can Compete With Google Fiber’

Phillip Dampier

The Wall Street Journal’s not-living-in-the-real-world editorial page strikes again.

The commentary pages have always been the weakest part of the Journal, primarily because they screech pro-corporate talking points in contrast to the more balanced reporting in the rest of the newspaper.

Mr. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. decided to distort broadband reality (again) in yesterday’s edition with a glowing commentary on how wonderful broadband providers are in his piece, “Springtime for Broadband.” The only thing missing was a border in fine print labeled, “Sponsored by Verizon, AT&T, and your cable company.”

While your Internet bill is being hiked at the same time your provider is slapping usage limits on your connection, Jenkins dismisses consumer-fueled complaints about broadband price gouging, assaulting Net Neutrality, and overall poor customer service as part of Washington’s “broadband policy circus.”

Charges fly hourly that Google or some other company is guilty of gross insult to net neutrality (that sacred principle nobody can define). Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has introduced legislation to regulate data caps and Internet pricing. Law professor Susan Crawford, until recently a White House technology adviser, clearly craves to be America’s next go-to talking head on broadband. Lately she’s been everywhere calling for a crackdown on the competing “monopolists” who supply Internet access.

How dare they complain, decries Jenkins in a robust defense of the 21st century version of the railway robber barons.

Comfortably playing patty cake with provider-fed talking points from the industry echo chamber, Jenkins is ready for battle, facts or not.

But wireless providers have invested big money to deploy high-speed mobile networks, and fixed and mobile are inevitably beginning to compete. The latest evidence: Australia recently predicted that up to 30% of households will go the all-wireless route and won’t be customers for its vaunted national broadband project.

Jenkins

Not exactly. The basis for this 30% figure is the National Broadband Network’s own business plan, which warns -if- the company raised prices to a maximum theoretical level, up to 30 percent of its customers would rely on wireless instead… by the year 2039. That is 26 years from now. You have nothing better to do in the meantime, right?

In fact, conservative critics of the fiber network, some defending the big wireless cell phone industry in Australia, have suggested fiber optics is a big waste of money because “wireless is the future.”

That old chestnut again.

“Now you can present a bulletin without touching a typewriter … it’s just there on the computer system, you don’t need a reel to reel tape recorder. I’ve got a touchscreen in front of me. Back then I had a big cartridge deck,” said Ray Hadley on 2GB radio. “Can you imagine the advances in technology in the next 26 years? I can’t. I can’t comprehend it. By the time they finish the NBN, it could be superseded by something we don’t even know about.”

NBN Myths, a website set up to tackle the disinformation campaign from political and industry opponents has one simple fact to convey: “Despite what you may have read from certain clueless commentators, there is not a single country or telecommunications company anywhere in the world that is attempting to replace fixed networks with wireless in urban areas, or even planning to do so in the future.”

Which would you rather have?

Even Telstra, the biggest telecom company in Australia scoffs at such a notion, noting a growing number of its customers have both wired and wireless service, and they do not depend on one over the other.

Research firm Telsyte found that 85 per cent of Australians want speeds of 50Mbps or higher, speeds impossible for wireless to offer. In fact, when the NBN fiber network became available to Australians, almost half the current users as of October last year had chosen an even-faster 100Mbps plan option. But Australians also want mobile broadband, and they are signing up for that as well.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics notes the number of mobile broadband Internet connections also grew by around 40% in Australia between 2009 and 2010. But here is the Achilles heel of wireless: it cannot deliver the same speeds or capacity, and providers charge high prices and deliver low usage caps. As a result, the wireless industry has pulled off a coup: they earn enormous revenues from networks they have successfully rationed. The total amount of data downloaded over Australia’s wireless networks actually fell on a per user basis, despite the growth in customers.

Much of Jenkins’ commentary is spoon-fed by the industry-funded Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which produces industry-sponsored studies designed to tell America all is well in our broadband duopoly.

In the latest federal survey, the average broadband speed in America is up to 15.6 megabits per second, from 14.3 a year earlier. Nearly half of customers who six months ago made do with one megabit or less have now moved up to higher speeds. Since 2009, the U.S. has gone from 22nd fastest Internet to the eighth fastest.

The 15.6Mbps figure comes from the Federal Communications Commission. The statistics about our global speed ranking come from Akamai’s voluntary speed test program. Other studies rate America much lower. More importantly, while providers in the U.S. try to squeeze out more performance from their copper networks, other countries are laying speedier fiber networks that are destined to once again leapfrog over the United States. Most charge less for their broadband connections as well.

Jenkins also quotes the ITIF which touts 20 million miles of fiber were laid in America last year. But the ITIF, when pressed, will admit the majority of that fiber was “middle mile” connections, institutional or business network fiber you cannot access, or fiber to cell towers. Fiber to the home expansion has stalled, primarily because Verizon has suspended expansion of its FiOS network to new areas after Wall Street loudly complained about the cost.

Jenkins argues that if we leave providers alone and stop criticizing their growing prices, declining competition, and fat profits, the marketplace will suddenly decide to invest in network upgrades yet again.

“The day may come when even Verizon, which visibly soured on its $23 billion FiOS bet, rediscovers an urge to invest in fixed broadband infrastructure to meet growing consumer lust for hi-def services,” writes Jenkins.

Would Wall Street rather see providers invest in network upgrades or return profits to shareholders? Investment expansion in the broadband industry comes when a company senses if they do not spend the money, their business will be swept away by others that will. Cable broadband threatens telephone company DSL, so AT&T cherry-picked communities for investment in its half-measure U-verse fiber to the neighborhood network. Google Fiber, should it choose to expand, will be an even bigger threat to both cable and phone companies. Municipal fiber to the home networks upset the incumbent players so much, they spend millions of ratepayer dollars in efforts to legislate them out of existence.

Jenkins’ view that giving the industry carte blanche to do and charge as it pleases to stimulate a better broadband future is as fanciful as NBN critics in Australia suggesting fiber upgrades should be canceled in favor of waiting 20+ years for improved wireless to come along.

He even approves of Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing, calling it proper price discrimination in a “fiercely competitive” environment to defray a network’s fixed costs.

Do you think there is fierce competition for your broadband dollar?

Broadband’s fixed costs are so low and predictable, it literally calls out consumption pricing as just the latest overreach for enhanced profits. As Suddenlink’s CEO himself admitted, the era of big expensive cable upgrades are over. Incremental upgrades are cheap, the costs to offer broadband are declining, so it is time to reap the profits.

Jenkins closes with one recommendation we can agree with: “A low-tech way to stir up broadband competition would be to relax the regulatory obstacles to the actual physical provision of broadband.”

We can start by scrapping all the state laws the industry lobbied to enact that prohibit community-owned broadband competition. If big cable and phone companies won’t provide communities with the quality of broadband service they need to compete for 21st century jobs, let those communities do it themselves.

Other stories of interest:

1. Wall Street Journal Nonsense: Canada Just Ahead of U.S. in Introducing Internet Overcharging
2. How Australia Will Shame North America: Fiber Speeds for Them, Overpriced, Slow Cable/DSL for You
3. Wall Street Encourages Verizon to Get Completely Out Of Landline/FiOS Business
4. Wall Street Journal Does Hit Piece on Australia’s National Broadband Plan — Hint, Hint to American Policymakers
5. We’re in the Broadband Shortage Business: Big Telecom Attacks Providers That Can Do Better

T-Mobile has scrapped the traditional two-year cell phone contract.

T-Mobile’s shift away from subsidized smartphones and standard two-year contracts could be a game-changer for American wireless consumers, but does the scrappy carrier have a good deal for you or mostly for itself?

T-Mobile is and has been America’s fourth largest carrier — the smallest among those offering nationwide home coverage. The provider has lost contract customers for years. T-Mobile’s coverage has been less than great in many areas and it often did not offer the latest and most popular smartphones. After its merger effort with AT&T was shot down by the Department of Justice for anti-competitive reasons, T-Mobile has attempted to remake itself by changing the rules under which most of us buy mobile service.

The biggest change of all is the end of the subsidized phone. For years, cell phone companies have offered free or low-cost phones to customers, earning back that subsidy by charging higher monthly rates and locking customers to two-year contracts with early termination fees. T-Mobile will still give you an affordable phone, only now you will pay it off in small installments over a two-year financing agreement.

What difference does this make? Customers who bounce from one two-year contract to the next may not see much difference. But if you keep your phone longer than two years or buy one elsewhere, your monthly rate with T-Mobile will no longer include an artificially higher price designed to recover the phone subsidy you no longer receive.

It also means nothing traps you with T-Mobile. If after six months you find their service unbecoming, you can leave without hundreds of dollars in termination fees. But customers on financing agreements will continue to make their payments for equipment purchases, and those phones will not be unlocked for use on another carrier until the remaining balance is paid off.

A typical T-Mobile customer looking for the latest iPhone will pay a $100 down payment and then finance the remaining balance, paying $20 a month for 24 months. Your monthly rate will start at $50 a month, which includes unlimited talk and texting, and a 500MB data allowance. If that is insufficient, an extra $10 a month will buy you an extra 2GB of data. If you want unlimited data, that plan is available for an extra $20 a month.

T-Mobile says their plans will save you $1,000 over the life of a two-year contract with AT&T or Verizon. We think they are exaggerating a bit.

Like their competition, T-Mobile is moving away from budget-minded “minute plans” that bundle calling, text and data. Instead, T-Mobile charges at least $50 a month for unlimited talk/text and a small data plan whether you want those features or not.

The Associated Press found that although T-Mobile ends up being the cheapest, the savings over its rivals is closer to $700 on average. The price over two years for a 16-gigabyte iPhone 5 with unlimited calling, unlimited texting and 2.5 gigabytes of data usage per month, excluding taxes, is:

• T-Mobile: $2,020
• AT&T/Verizon: $2,635 (2-3GB data plan)
• Sprint: $2,840 (unlimited data plan included)

Some other things to consider:

• Once your phone is paid off, your ongoing T-Mobile bill will no longer show a phone subsidy payback built into prices charged by other carriers;
• You can pay your phone off early, with no penalty;
• T-Mobile’s 4G network is a mix of HSPA+ and LTE. The more commonly encountered HSPA+ network gets good marks for speed, but a number of densely populated T-Mobile coverage areas surprisingly often default to their older 2G network, which is painfully slow. LTE is only available in about seven cities at the moment, so it is still a rarity;
• T-Mobile’s unlimited service is free from tricks and traps like soft caps and speed throttles. It also performs better than Sprint’s unlimited service on its overloaded 3G and spotty Clearwire 4G WiMAX network. Sprint’s LTE network is on the way… slowly. It seems to be rolling out first in small cities you have never heard of;
• T-Mobile’s coverage in rural and exurban areas is frankly terrible. Travelers on main highways may not encounter many signal gaps, but those living in small towns or off the beaten path may get a roaming signal or poor or no reception from T-Mobile’s own towers at all. The frequencies used for its data service also do not work as well indoors as its larger rivals.

T-Mobile channels Oprah in this new ad as the big four wireless cowboys get in touch with their feelings. But only one is ready to don a pink hat and ride off on his own. (1 minute)

Other stories of interest:

1. Sprint’s iPhone? Company Rumored to Introduce Iconic Phone in October
2. AT&T’s Apple iPhone 5 Customers Can Keep “Unlimited Data” Plans
3. Wireless Carriers’ Dream Come True: The End of the Phone Subsidy; T-Mobile May Start Trend
4. What Bandwidth Crisis: Unlimited Data War Erupts Between T-Mobile, Sprint, MetroPCS
5. Sprint Will Continue Offering Unlimited Data On Its Forthcoming LTE 4G Network

Virgin Media is in hot water with a UK advertising regulator after the company’s marketing department borrowed one of the tricks successfully employed in the United States: selling “unlimited broadband” service that actually is not unlimited at all.

Competitors BSkyB and BT jointly complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about misleading ad claims from Virgin Media that promise unlimited broadband, without bothering to clearly mention Virgin uses a “traffic management policy” that slashes speeds in half when a customer downloads more than 11GB during peak usage times.

Virgin defended its advertising, claiming its speed throttle is so infrequently activated that 97.7% of its customers would never encounter it.

But the ASA would have none of that, noting Virgin’s advertising campaign specifically targets customers who lust for faster speed and are engaged in bandwidth intensive activities.

The ad claim: “The faster your broadband speed, the more you’ll be able to do online. So, if there are a few of you at home gaming, downloading, streaming movies and shopping, then mega speeds of up to 100Mbps will let you all do your thing without slowing each other down.”

The tiny fine print.

“In that context we considered that the restriction of reducing users’ download speeds by 50% was not moderate and that any reference to it was likely to contradict, rather than clarify, the claims that the service was ‘unlimited’,” the ASA said. “We therefore concluded that the claim ‘unlimited’ was misleading.”

A Virgin spokesperson explained the “unlimited” in the advertising actually referred to one’s ability to use their account as often as they like without worrying about overlimit fees.

“Unlike BT or Sky, all Virgin Media customers can download as much as they like, safe in the knowledge we’ll never charge them more.”

The ASA itself is not militant adhering to the dictionary definition of “unlimited” either.

The ASA, which previously banned more than two dozen Virgin ads for stretching the truth, ruled this one misleading as well because Virgin Media crossed the line imposing restrictions “that were more than moderate:”

While the claim “no hidden charges” made clear that users would not be charged for downloading or browsing, we considered that the inclusion of the claims “unlimited” and “no caps” implied that there were no other restrictions to the service, regardless of how much data users downloaded and browsed. Virgin Media’s traffic management policy reduced users’ download speeds by 50% if they exceeded certain data thresholds and we considered that this was an immoderate restriction to the advertised “unlimited” service. We therefore concluded that the claim “Unlimited downloads Download and browse as much as you like with no caps and no hidden charges” misleadingly implied that there were no provider-imposed restrictions on a customer’s ability to download data.

“The problem is that the service claims to be unlimited but is too limited,” comments Stop the Cap! reader James, who almost thought this was an April Fools’ prank. “A little limited would be just fine. So if you claim your service is unlimited, consumers should expect it be subject to moderate limitations?”

Virgin has since slightly relaxed its speed throttle; violators now face a 40% speed cut when they are found to be downloading “too much” during peak usage periods.

For UK broadband users, the larger question is why the ASA simply didn’t reach for the dictionary when attempting to define “unlimited.”

“If a broadband provider wants to advertise unlimited service, they should simply offer it,” says Stop the Cap! reader Geoff Peale. “Calling it unlimited while interfering with your speed is nothing short of trickery, and the ASA should know better.”

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned 25 Virgin Media adverts for being either misleading or factually incorrect in the past 18 months. The BBC’s Watchdog took a humorous look at them to find out why so many are falling afoul of the regulator. (6 minutes)

Thanks to readers James and Geoff for sharing the story.

Other stories of interest:

1. Virgin Media Doubling Broadband Speeds for Free While Competitor Sky Unveils 100Gbps Internet for UK
2. Welcome to Virgin Mobile’s Higher Calling: The 2.5GB/256kbps Usage Throttle Starts Friday
3. Virgin Mobile Tightens the Noose on Its ‘Unlimited Mobile Broadband’ With Even More Speed Throttles
4. Virgin Tests World’s Fastest Cable Broadband for UK: 1.5Gbps Beats Your 15Mbps Service
5. Virgin Mobile Gives Up on Unlimited Wireless Broadband: Will Adopt 5GB Cap Feb. 15

Pulling the wool over your eyes.

As the Federal Communications Commission continues to consider AT&T’s proposal to abandon its wired infrastructure in rural service areas, hundreds of comments are arriving at the federal agency both for and against the idea. Between the submissions from large telecom companies and state regulators, a curious mix of professionally prepared comments favoring AT&T’s proposal have also arrived, many from organizations that simply do not have a direct interest in the outcome.

These Friends of AT&T include a range of non-profit, minority, and civil rights groups that have little interest in rural telecommunications policy but every interest in pleasing a company that lends executives to serve on advisory boards or writes big checks.

Even worse, some of the constituencies these groups purport to represent are among the most vulnerable. The rural poor, elderly, and economically disadvantaged are precisely those that cannot afford to lose budget-friendly phone and broadband service in favor of the expensive wireless solutions AT&T proposes as replacements.

Not all groups favoring AT&T are simply trolling for corporate contributions. Some seem to have been hoodwinked by the AT&T’s lobbyists, believing that abandoning rural wired infrastructure is an evolutionary step towards better service. They do not understand AT&T will offer exceptionally expensive broadband and voice calling over a wireless network notorious for dropped calls, poor rural reception, and stingy data caps in its place.

Stop the Cap! is here to help. Over the coming weeks, we will be running a special series calling out a range of groups that either take AT&T money and advocate for their cause or seem misinformed about the future rural reality AT&T has in store for rural America. We encourage readers to contact these groups and let them know they are hurting themselves — and you — spending precious resources advocating for a multibillion dollar telecommunications company that honestly does not need their help and does not have their interests at heart.

Ask these groups to carefully consider the comments from organizations that live and breathe rural broadband, consumer protection, and oversight:

A million-five can buy a lot of advocacy.

RURAL BROADBAND POLICY GROUP: “[We are] alarmed at the request AT&T has presented before the Commission, and believes that approving this petition will inflict negative consequences on rural communities and consumers including loss of affordable and reliable basic telephone service, which is the only form of communication many remote communities can access; eliminate consumer protections that have made it possible for rural people to access telecommunications services; reverse our commitment to Universal Service; endanger our national public safety; and fuel a divest-from-Rural-trend that will disadvantage our national economy and global competency. We simply cannot allow that to happen.”

FREE PRESS: “For the typical consumer, the grant of AT&T’s wishes would mean no protections from price gouging, no accountability for service outages, no consumer protections from cramming and slamming, and no reliable access to emergency services. For millions of consumers and businesses, it would mean no access at all, as AT&T would be free to stop providing service. And because there would no longer be any obligation for interconnection, Americans should expect to see rolling localized Internet blackouts as intercarrier disputes pop up, which will be “resolved” by higher prices paid to dominant carriers like AT&T.”

MICHIGAN PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION: “The MPSC recognizes that the transition to an IP-based network is already underway. The MPSC supports the transition from TDM to IP-based or other next generation networks and services, and the deployment of affordable, open, and high-capacity broadband by all broadband providers. However, it is imperative to recognize that great care must be taken to ensure the continuation of the competitive marketplace, universal service, and consumer protections. AT&T’s Petition proposes sweeping deregulation of the incumbent providers, which would allow them to withdraw service unilaterally. There cannot be a reduction in competition, thus leaving customers subject to prices and/or rates that are not just, reasonable, and affordable, with little or no competitive recourse.”

Coming Up: The National Farmers Union: Hoodwinked by AT&T’s Lobbyists

Other stories of interest:

1. AT&T’s Broadband Answer for Rural America: Sell Rural DSL Operations To Someone Else
2. Analyzing AT&T’s Plan to Expand Service: Transformation or Bait & Switch for Rural America?
3. Kansas House of Representatives Votes 118-1 in Favor of AT&T Bill to Abandon Rural Kansas
4. Telephone Companies Bilking Consumers for Fatter Revenue Is as Simple as “ABC”
5. Dark Money: Inside the Internet Innovation Alliance’s Guide to Total Deregulation, Abandoning Rural America