Verizon Selling Internet-Phone-TV Package in FiOS Areas for $95 a Month

One of the reasons StoptheCap! always believed Time Warner chose the cities it did for its cap experiment was to steer clear of Verizon, particularly where the company offers its fiber optic service to homes.  Verizon FiOS does not cap Internet usage and has made that well known.

The blowback from Time Warner’s experimental caps wasn’t just limited to the cities “lucky” enough to be chosen.  The story went national, and now competitors are moving in to take advantage of Time Warner’s public relations catastrophe and poach their customers.

Verizon is now offering customers in FiOS territories a bundle of services that are priced well below what Time Warner is charging people in nearby cities where FiOS isn’t.  For $94.99 a month for the first year ($99.99 a month for the second), they are bundling an unlimited digital phone service, a basic cable package with up to 295 channels and a dozen HD channels, and broadband service at 10Mbps down and 2Mbps up!  Oh, and they’ll also give you a $150 rebate in the form of a debit card.  I pay $170 a month to Time Warner in Rochester and don’t even get their digital phone product, and standard Internet service here is 10Mbps down and a silly 384Kbps up.  Ahhh… competition.

And Verizon will, for $10 more, give you 20Mbps down and 5Mbps up, as well as 350 channels, more than 50 in HD.  I have to pay $10 more here and that only gives me “Turbo” Road Runner offering 15Mbps down and 1Mbps up (plus the Powerboost gimmick).  That’s it.

Verizon High Speed Internet DSL Service For $18 A Month

Now you see why Time Warner doesn’t dare try their cap experiment in a community where FiOS is available.  Why would anyone stay a customer?  Heck, even if you wanted to stay with Time Warner for phone and television service, you can buy faster broadband from Verizon on their 10/2 tier for $45 a month, and no caps.

Verizon also gets to target communities where FiOS isn’t yet available, but Time Warner’s threatened caps were, with a guaranteed two year contract-fixed price for DSL comparable to Road Runner Lite for $18 a month. Or they’ll sell their highest DSL tier (7.1Mbps down/768kbps up) for $38 a month and no modem rental fee. No caps there either.

Frontier continues to enjoy smacking Time Warner around for its duplicitous “caps are about you saving money” campaign.  In the Sunday Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, they took another shot at Time Warner’s CEO Glenn Britt for accusing customers of “misunderstanding” their plan, where they try and convince customers that emptying their wallets and handing more money over to Time Warner is somehow a good thing.

Thanks to StoptheCap! reader Bob for sending along the Frontier ad.  Now, if Frontier had not lost the first self-install kit they sent our way (and are supposedly re-shipping express mail to arrive here today), we could have been hooked up by now.

During the usage cap controversy, public officials in the Triad of North Carolina had their hands tied because competitive alternatives for the area just couldn’t provide an equivalent level of service.  Greensboro mayor Yvonne Johnson sought out other cable companies to potentially wire her city.  Unfortunately, cable operators have traditionally maintained their informal agreement to not overbuild, or compete in cities where another operator already provides service.

[This story appeared before last week’s announcement that Time Warner had temporarily shelved the usage caps in these communities.]

Time Warner Alex, bless his heart.  He’s back with another revelation for all of the cities that successfully drove back the usage caps, at least for now.  Since we’re unwilling to play in his metered sandbox, he’s taking all of the toys home with him.  It seems that because Rochester, Austin, San Antonio, and the Triad said “no thanks” to Time Warner’s Tiers, the company may be rethinking deploying DOCSIS 3 upgrades in these markets.

“It was scheduled as part of consumption based billing trial, but we all know how you feel about that,” he Tweeted.  It’s good to know that he knows.

Evidently, unless customers are willing to be force-fed paltry and overpriced tiers, Time Warner doesn’t see the point in keeping up with the rest of the country’s cable broadband providers who are upgrading systems to DOCSIS 3.

No matter that the upgrades will likely help Time Warner as much as its customers.  Given the choice between mega-fast tiers that blow through usage caps in a matter of hours vs. unlimited access at speeds that are perfectly fine for the majority of broadband applications, customers have overwhelmingly made their choice – we’ll take what we have now.

Nobody objects if Time Warner wants to rake in more cash by deploying their upgrades and selling access to premium speed tiers at higher prices, as long as those tiers are unlimited, and existing plans are left alone for those happy enough with what they receive today.  If Time Warner wants to miss that opportunity, that’s their business.  Protecting rationally priced Internet access is ours.

"This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine."

Space aliens.  Bigfoot.  Amelia Earhart.  Road Runner Lite.

Wait.

Road Runner Lite?  The “mini-me” of broadband?  The perfect value plan for consumers who just need to check their e-mail and browse web pages?

Yes.  That Road Runner Lite.

I thought you heard of it.

Leonard Nimoy examines how you can pay less for Internet right now!

A lot of people have heard rumors about it, but for those in western New York, ferreting it out becomes a monumental event.  An all-nighter.  A mystery that Leonard Nimoy and an entire In Search Of… production team couldn’t easily solve.

StoptheCap! reader Meghan wasted spent her morning on a quest to find the elusive “Road Runner Lite,” if only to suggest it to the occasional person out there who is upset because they feel they’re spending too much on their Internet service now.

If she had this much trouble, imagine that casual browser and e-mail reader!  Calling doesn’t guarantee you’ll get instant information either.

The adventure turned out to be so ponderous, we were thinking of creating a PDF for you to enjoy at your leisure.  You could print it out and waste an entire ink cartridge, take it in the bathroom, read it before going to bed, and then use it for the bottom of a bird cage.  But then that would mean another 15 minutes of our life and yours we’d never get back.  Our thanks to Meghan, who sacrificed everything just to help others go bird watching, starting below the fold.

Leonard may still be looking for extraterrestrials, but our crack team has managed to find an option for those that might be co-opted into the Time Warner Re-Education campaign today to pay out of this world prices for broadband service tomorrow.

… Continue Reading

Broadband Caps: Turning the Internet Back to 1996

There is a disparity in Internet usage between the young and the old.

If one were to poll customers about whether or not they wanted limits and tiers on their broadband service, two things are apparent:

1. Consumers overwhelmingly oppose usage caps and tiered accounts.
2. Those that do approve of caps and tiers are overwhelmingly older users of the Internet, particularly 45+ of age.

Broadband providers recognize these facts, yet continue to attempt to place limits on broadband usage.  Many providers’ have marketing and public relations strategies that target older customers with an “us vs. them” approach.  Why should you, as a casual Internet user, “subsidize” those younger heavy users who are fully leveraging the Internet to its fullest potential?  Company officials will often toss around broadband services older users have never heard of, much less used.  “Bit Torrents,” “heavy movie downloads from newsgroups,” “Hulu,” just to name a few, confound a lot of casual net users who have barely mastered their e-mail account, much less considered making video calls using Skype.

The generation gap lives online too.  But there is a lot more to this story than they tell you.

Some companies claim the majority of their customers consume a tiny amount of bandwidth when compared against other customers.  Traditionally, the older a customer, the less bandwidth they consume.  And therein lies a problem for them.  As the demographics for the net continue to shift towards younger, heavier consumers of Internet applications, the writing is on the whiteboard.  No longer can a broadband provider expect to pocket the enormous profits they earn from a monthly service that some users barely even use.

There should be nothing wrong with a casual user paying less for their Internet service.  The question is, should they receive less expensive service at the “price” of severely curtailing other users who naturally consume more?  That seems to be the marketing plan.  They get to overcharge you for a casual user plan and also overcharge and limit heavier users from consuming too much on their networks.  They win.  Everyone else loses.

The truth is, most broadband providers already provide discounted plans for light users, usually at slower speeds, but at significantly lower pricing.  For a casual user reading e-mail and browsing web pages, the Internet speed war is irrelevant.  Anything more than three or four times faster than dial-up access will provide comfortable browsing without sitting around waiting for pages to load.  With a “light” user plan, you can still listen to Internet radio, move pictures of the kids back and forth, do all the web browsing you could imagine, and your e-mail will still arrive super fast.  Since you don’t care about big downloads or watching TV online, why pay for the extra speed you’ll never use?  You don’t have to.  More importantly, you don’t have to right now!  Despite the fact many of these “lite” plans are the best kept secret in town, your provider probably already offers them, and you don’t have to wait for some new tier plan to sign up!

I called several providers this afternoon and inquired about Internet broadband service.  Every last one of them quickly tried to sell me a bundle of services combining cable television, telephone, and Internet service for a single monthly price.  No provider asked about how I used the Internet, much less talk about different levels of service.  They simply wanted to move that bundle, often with a promotional price for the first six months or year of service.  That bundle always included the standard package of Internet for around $40 a month, which is probably overkill for casual users.

Only when I complained about the price or suggested I didn’t think I would use the Internet that much did the “lite plan” details finally start coming into the conversation.  Time Warner pitched Road Runner Lite only after saying I didn’t want the phone service and felt I wouldn’t use the Internet very often.  Frontier tried to convince me that once I got online, I’d want the extra speed and resisted trying to get me into anything other than a bundle with a standard Internet plan, touting a free mini netbook if I also took their “Peace of Mind” support package and a contract.  Verizon FiOS in Buffalo said it was no problem, since they sell packages of Internet service based on speed anyway.  Typical.  The fiber optic competitor was the only one that volunteered the light plan and asked how much I used the Internet before recommending a plan.  Of course, where there is FiOS, there are no usage caps in those communities.

If you are shopping for cable modem or DSL service, they are not apt to volunteer information about their “light user” plans unless you ask.

Another way you are certain to hear about these kinds of discount plans is when you try and cancel your standard broadband service.  They want to keep you as a customer, so you’ll be pitched a discount plan just to keep you.

It’s unfortunate that many broadband providers claim to be for saving light users money, but for all intents and purposes keep those plans a secret.  If you are a casual user looking for a deal, buying into the proposition of tiered pricing with steep overlimit fees is a bad deal for you and everyone else.  A flat rate, speed limited “lite plan” gives you everything you need, and you never have to worry that you might get billed for more than you expect.  The good news is, you can get these types of plans today.  Call your provider and ask!