Good morning.

It appears we’ve managed a successful move to a much more robust and responsive server, hopefully putting an end to the crushing slowdowns we were dealing with yesterday afternoon as traffic overwhelmed us.   If you encounter any errors or problems, please let me know.

I spent part of last evening listening to some of the sources I developed back during the Frontier 5GB proposed cap debacle from last summer, and have been able to gain some interesting insights, at least for the Rochester market.

1) Time Warner employees locally aren’t exactly thrilled, saddled with Rochester being a “test city” for the Internet rationing plan for Road Runner.  I suspect there is a growing consensus that Rochester will become the early epicenter for the pushback against these caps as the story has hit a major nerve in this community and continues to drive news coverage and activism.  Some of the local employees know perfectly well this is a very vocal community when it comes to technological development, and the headaches have just begun for them.

This decision to impose caps comes from outside of this area, and the one thing I think we all agreed on is that this is not Beaumont, Texas.  The phone calls and e-mails to Time Warner are coming in fast and furious, and need to continue to come in.  The cancellations have already begun as people decide that after the last substantial rate hike for cable services, just a month or two ago, this was the final straw.  What really matters most to Time Warner will be the number of people who actually leave.  Everyone complains.  So “complain and bear it” is really not going to be too effective in the long run.  They are ready for that.

2) It appears the actual effective date for the rationing plan with the punitive overage charges will go into effect in Rochester on November 1st.  I don’t know if this is also the date for Austin and San Antonio.  Greensboro was supposed to start earlier than the other “lucky cities.”

3) Frontier is actually sitting back and reflecting on what Time Warner has done which is a very good sign.  Time Warner was convinced that Frontier would announce its own cap and provide cover for Time Warner in Rochester.  But there are some in management who are echoing my own beliefs that this is a golden opportunity to consider dropping the cap plan they pondered last summer and pull the rug out from under Time Warner by dropping any notion of a cap and going on the attack.  Imagine the advertising mailers and ads bashing Time Warner for rationing Internet for their customers and forcing them to watch a gas gauge while on Frontier, you can sit back and just enjoy your Internet service without being afraid of budget busting cable bills.  Keeping people with Frontier, especially on a bundle, also can help preserve their wired telephone business, which has been hurting as people flip to digital phone products or just use their cell phones.

I also reflected I felt like Julie, your cruise director, about the irony of this site directing customers away from Frontier last summer over the prospects of a 5GB usage cap, but now directing people back to a renewed Frontier that boldly makes smart choices to win back customers they’ve lost over the years.  Let’s hope those forward thinking Frontier executives are able to convince this company they can have an amazing spike in new business by using this opportunity to their advantage.  I will post an Open Letter to Frontier here soon enough.

In other developments this morning, the Democrat & Chronicle is looking for people willing to speak on this issue on camera for a major story this Sunday.  If you are interested and are in Rochester, call Jeff Blackwell at (585) 258-2712.

Patrice Walsh at WHAM-TV made an error in her news report last evening by stating Verizon FIOS has had usage caps for the last 18 months.  Oops!  Whoever told her that got it completely wrong.  Verizon FIOS has no usage caps with their service.  And there has been a lot of speculation in our own comments section about what Earthlink is going to do.  The tech support and front line customer service people are not aware of corporate policy, so they are simply reflecting back what they’ve been trained to say.  We are still waiting for corporate communications representatives to get back to us with a definitive answer.  Right now, no caps on Earthlink.