Competition does occasionally bring lower prices, but only to those who threaten to abandon their current provider to take their business elsewhere.

Residents in several suburbs of Syracuse, New York have learned that trick as Verizon nears the launch of FiOS service in their area, and the result is significant savings of more than $240 a year, just for the asking.

“Where we find the competition really paying off is for those consumers who might already be with Time Warner,” Doug Williams, a Cambridge-based analyst with Forrester Research told the Syracuse Post-Standard.  “People whose promotional deals are ending are often able to get a sweet deal with nothing more than a phone call and a mention of the word “FiOS.”

It worked for Doug himself up in Boston, where his mother is served by Comcast:

Doug Williams had a fool-proof plan for his mother-in-law to get at least $20 knocked off her cable bill: Call the cable company and tell them Verizon FiOS television was in her neighborhood.

It worked without a hitch. The operator looked up her address, then gave her a discount without any hesitation. Williams’ family lives in the Boston area, where Verizon’s fiber optic television service is the first real competition to the area’s entrenched cable provider, Comcast.

The Syracuse suburbs of Clay, Cicero, East Syracuse, North Syracuse and Fleming already have, or will soon have access to FiOS.  The towns of DeWitt and Salina last week approved franchise agreements with Verizon to provide the service, and Camillus approved the franchise agreement on August 25.

The addition of the Camillus television franchises brings to 161 the total number of New York municipalities that have authorized Verizon to provide FiOS TV service.

The company is in the process of building and installing the necessary video equipment in local central offices in the central New York region, and anticipates that FiOS TV service will be turned on for new customers in
municipalities there in the fall.

[flv width=”296″ height=”222″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSYR Syracuse FiOS Coming to CNY.flv[/flv]

WSYR-TV Syracuse covers the announcement by Clay officials of Verizon’s first franchise agreement in the area. (3/16/2009)

Time Warner Cable has been preparing for Verizon for at least a year, starting with complaints about how the franchise agreement was handled in Clay, where Time Warner officials claimed they were given insufficient notice to review the franchise proposal.  That claim was brushed aside by the New York Public Service Commission, which has a history of rubber stamping franchise proposals anyway.  Time Warner has had little to say about other franchise agreement negotiations since.

The cable company has also been wringing its hands about fears Verizon’s construction crews will be digging up their customers’ lawns, making a mess, and accidentally interrupting service for their customers.  Time Warner’s concerns may have come in part from a WSYR-TV report back in June highlighting the frustrations of Clay residents who have been inconvenienced by Verizon’s slow work in their area.  But most consumers welcome the competition.

[flv width=”296″ height=”222″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSYR Syracuse Preparing for FiOS.flv[/flv]

WSYR-TV Syracuse highlights the plight of Clay residents running out of patience as Verizon wires their community for FiOS. (6/4/09)

“People are excited. It looks like there will be an opportunity for choice,” Cicero town supervisor Chet Dudzinski told the newspaper.

Verizon FiOS installation crews start to wear out welcome in Clay, N.Y.

Time Warner claims it’s not worried by the competition, noting it successfully competes in many other FiOS-wired communities.  But Time Warner’s marketing efforts have changed with the looming threat of competition.  First, the company brought a “price protection agreement” to the area, trying to lock in existing customers to a lengthy contract before the competition arrived, limiting their chances to switch providers.  Then the company embarked on a major HD channel expansion, quickly bringing Syracuse residents more than 100 HD channels.  Time Warner promoted their heavy emphasis on local sports programming, touting Syracuse University football and basketball games, and local high school sports coverage.

Verizon shot back they will feature more than 115 HD channels, and 70% of their 15,000 videos on demand are available for free.  Verizon also will carry many Syracuse sports events, and will also bring NFL Network and ESPN 360 to the area, services Time Warner has refused to carry.

Consumers enjoy the competitive choice, and with the possibility walking their cable and broadband service to the “other guy” across town, will be able to leverage some additional savings off their service.

For Syracuse city residents, the wait will be somewhat longer.  City officials are wrangling over the kinds of public access programming and service policies Verizon will be required to provide before they will negotiate a franchise agreement with them.  The foot dragging may last a year or longer, as the city will vote Monday on whether to spend $30,000 of taxpayers’ money just to ascertain what the city needs from Verizon when negotiations begin.  City residents who want competition now may want to inform their elected officials spending $30,000 to “study” the issue is just a tad excessive, especially considering The Google provides ample information, for free, about what other communities across the northeast have accomplished as part of their negotiations with the dominant phone company in the region.

Verizon’s complete list of franchises in New York state is below the jump.

… Continue Reading

Argentina's largest cable operator wants to get even larger

The Argentine government recognizes market concentration when it sees it, and has overturned a decision by the Argentine Supreme Court to approve the merger of two giant cable conglomerates in Argentina — Cablevisión and Multichannel, both owned by Grupo Clarín.  Combined, they would control more than half of the nation’s cable television marketplace.  The decision to block the merger, announced by Federal Broadcasting Committee Chairman Gabriel Mariotto  in testimony before the Argentine Congress, came out of concerns that a combined company would abuse its market position.  But Mariotto also expressed concern that the single company would have a stranglehold over soccer coverage, something Argentina’s citizens could never accept.

Mariotto said Argentina’s new media law to combat market concentration would  “do away with the status of dominant market position.”

“With the control these two companies would have over popular television programming like football, which would likely only be available on their cable systems, competitors could never get off the ground,” argued Mariotto.

Gabriel Mariotto, Chairman of the Federal Broadcasting Committee - Argentina

Cablevisión executives immediately condemned the decision by the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, and questioned why the transaction, approved by the former government run by President Kirchner’s husband, Nestor, was now suddenly off the table.

“Cablevisión is at 47% market share nationally, far from the telephone companies as they reach over 95%,” according to Cablevisión officials.

Cablevisión’s statement added: “It is very striking that Chairman Mariotto made the decision without ever notifying Cablevisión of the reasons, and never gave the company a chance to respond.  Cablevisión strictly complies with all Argentine laws, in regards to our franchise agreements, programming contracts and corporate governance.”

The company accused Mariotto of playing politics, accusing him of “misleading” lawmakers and the public, and grandstanding through his very visible public announcement.

Ironically, Argentina’s challenge of big cable operator mergers comes just one week after a federal judge in Washington threw out an FCC-mandated maximum limit of 30% market control for America’s cable operators.  A legal challenge, brought by Comcast, resulted in the cap being tossed.  Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, is already nearing the former 30% limit and is now free to exceed it with additional mergers and acquisitions.

AT&T Entertainment: AT&T's answer to TV Everywhere

AT&T, not wanting to be left behind in the race to provide online video content to subscribers, has soft-launched its own video portal site, AT&T Entertainment.  The site, primarily for AT&T’s U-verse customers, is also available to anyone else who drops by to visit, although the content currently available to view is already available online elsewhere.

Current AT&T customers already have an account on the site based on their att.net Member ID.  Logging in adds several additional features, including:

• Viewing age restricted content (if you meet minimum age requirements)
• Rating shows and movies
• Creating and managing a personalized library and queue
• Sharing videos with friends via email
• Viewing your U-verse guide and managing recordings on your DVR (if you have an AT&T U-verse account associated with your ATT.net Member ID)

At present, none of the content is exclusive to AT&T — it’s mostly a mix of videos from Hulu, CBS, and a few cable networks that allow videos to be embedded on other websites.  AT&T has promised it will expand the service when it officially launches at a yet to be determined date.

Ironically, while watching one Hulu-based TV show, the first thing shown to me was an advertisement from Sprint bashing AT&T for overcharging customers.

A new version of our site’s theme has finally been released, which will make us be able to swat some additional bugs and make some minor changes around here.  There may be some minor downtime over the weekend as the update and our revisions to it are tested and implemented.

When One Giant ISP Goes Down, An Entire Country Will Notice

Millions of Australians were completely cut off from the global Internet Thursday when Telstra, Australia’s primary Internet Service Provider, lost connectivity to all websites hosted outside of the country.

The outage – which occurred between 7:43am and 8:50am – affected all Telstra home and business ADSL broadband, cable and mobile internet customers nationwide, the company said.

A Telstra spokesman said a planned change in the hardware that controls the ebb and flow of its international internet traffic was the cause of yesterday’s nationwide outage.  Telstra’s network service was restored by rolling back the change to its original settings and restarting the equipment.

“We’re continuing to work to understand what happened and why. What we understand from preliminary inquiries is that from 7.43am customers attempting to access websites hosted overseas, or Australian sites with content hosted overseas, received a network error,” the spokesman said.

The result was a torrent of phone calls from upset customers waiting on hold with Telstra customer service, assuming they got their call through, while sipping their morning coffee.

“We have commenced a detailed and thorough technical investigation into the incident. This may take some time to conduct to ensure we fully understand the issue and can put appropriate measures in place to maintain the integrity and operation of our network,” the spokesman said.

An investigation?  Matt in Sydney was bemused with the entire experience:  “I can’t believe the reported resolution was a restart. ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again? Is it plugged in?'”