Cable television customers have finally reached their limit.  For years, annual rate increases well in excess of inflation have annoyed customers, but beyond complaining, few actually dropped service.  That has begun to change as the economy, consumer debt, job fears, and other expenses have finally provoked customers to begin paring back on their cable package.

According to research from Centris, a consumer research organization, a virtual ceiling of tolerance for cable rate increases appears to have been reached for many subscribers.  Although consumers are not dropping cable en masse, they are not simply accepting a higher bill either.  They are dropping services from their cable package.  In 2008 and 2009, premium movie channels and pay per view suffered most from customer downgrades.  Consumers with multiple premium movie channels started by dropping one or two of them, and their use of pay per view service also dropped.  As the financial impact of the recession wore on, the next round of rate increases caused additional erosion — by late 2009 many consumers discontinued all of their premium services.

The goal?  To reduce or at least maintain a consistent monthly bill.  The average amount consumers are paying for digital cable dropped from $79 a month in the third quarter of 2008 to $70 in the third quarter of 2009.  That decline didn’t come from discounts from the industry — it came from dropping channels and services. In 2010, consumers are still pruning away, now impacting digital basic cable and smaller add-ons like sports and movie tiers.  They are also phoning their provider threatening to cancel service altogether if additional discounts cannot be found.  Cable operators, not surprisingly, have managed to find plenty of savings for consumers who ask and stand their ground, ready to walk away from cable.

The cable industry has sought to promote bundled services as an anti-erosion measure.  It’s much harder to walk away from a provider supplying your television, Internet, and phone service, especially if they lock you into a multi-year service agreement with a cancellation fee.  The savings promoted from bundled services come largely as a result of steeper price increases on standalone products and services, manufacturing “added value” for so-called “triple play” packages.

Some customers have divorced from pay television service altogether, deciding relentless price increases and the 500 channel universe shoveled in their direction just isn’t worth the price.  For many American families, however, such drastic cord cutting would border on traumatic, and they haven’t managed such a drastic step.

Luckily, a growing number of consumers have discovered taking the Luddite approach to television entertainment isn’t a requirement any longer.

Cutting the Cord With Online Viewing

With the growing penetration of fast broadband service in homes across the country, online video has rapidly become one of the most popular online services, particularly when it’s available for free.  The benefits don’t stop at the cost — programming catalogs are becoming increasingly deep and diverse allowing fans to watch entire seasons of shows on-demand, with a limited commercial load.  A consumer looking for something to watch might easily find more entertainment online than wading through hundreds of cable channels of niche and re-purposed programming (and program length commercials).

Cable companies are well aware of the trend towards online video.  First considered part-curiosity, part-piracy, today online video is provided by the major American networks, cable programmers, independent filmmakers, YouTube, and of course, Hulu.  It isn’t just for those torrent sites anymore.  And there is plenty of room for online video to grow.

The industry uses research companies like Centris to carefully track subscriber trends.  They want to be out in front of any sea change in viewing practices that could impact their business model and their revenue, and avoid repeating the mistakes others made in ignoring a potential threat for too long.

Wall Street is well aware of the potential threat as well.

Craig Moffett, a cable industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein is among the most prominent trend-watchers for the cable industry.  He sees some warning signs for the future.

“Still no evidence of cord-cutting, but as prices spiral higher, the stresses on the system are unquestionably growing,” Moffett said.

So far, the cable industry has decided the best way to fight potential losses is to get into the game themselves on their terms.  Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the nation’s largest cable operators, are launching their TV Everywhere concepts, which provide their broadband customers with online access to a myriad of cable programming, on demand, and currently for free.  The catch?  You must be a verified, current pay television customer.  If you want to watch a basic cable show, you need a basic cable subscription.  Want to watch Bill Maher online?  You can, assuming you are a verified HBO premium television subscriber.

Comcast’s system is already up and running.  Time Warner Cable is expected to roll out their system sometime this year.

The industry is even selling the public they applaud the online video experience as a win for customers.  Time Warner Cable president and CEO Glenn Britt said, “TV Everywhere is an all-around win for those of us who love television. It will give our customers more control over content and allow them greater access to programs they are already paying for, while enhancing the distributors’ and networks’ robust business model that encourages the creation of great content.”

He didn’t say it also protects Time Warner Cable’s flank from cord-cutting.  Lose the cable subscription and your access to online cable programming goes with it.

But the question remains, is that enough to protect cable television revenue?

The answer might be no.

[flv width=”400″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Invasion of the Cable Killers 9-15-09.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg News reported on ‘The Invasion of the Cable Killers’ — new hardware that lets you bypass cable, back on September 15, 2009.  (2 minutes)

The Coming Online Viewing War: The Players Assemble

Who owns and controls programming ultimately controls the distribution of it.  Time Warner Cable took several shots at Fox a few weeks ago when threatened with the loss of Fox programming over a contract dispute.  Alex Dudley, spokesman for Time Warner Cable, told NY1 viewers much of Fox’s programming is available online for the taking, so even if the network was thrown off the cable company’s lineup, viewers could simply bypass the dispute and watch online… for free.  His message – the dollar value Fox places on its programming is diminished when it gives it away for free online.

The fact so much of network programming is available online for free is part of the dispute over how much cable operators should pay to carry networks on their cable systems.  When the industry passes along those carriage fees to consumers, will that be the last straw for some who will drop their cable subscription and simply watch everything online?

“They’re the ones who are going to resist these price increases that the programmers are trying to push,” said Dudley. “One need look no further than the music industry for an example of what happens when consumers feel taken advantage of by an entire industry.”

Dudley’s remark is more telling than he realizes.  The cable industry is well aware of what happened when the music and newspaper industry ignored nascent challenges to their business models like piracy or free access to their content.  To cable operators, the music and newspaper industries’ online experiences are lessons to be learned and not repeated.  The music industry waited too long to crack down on piracy and lost pricing power as consumers simply stole what they rationalized was overpriced.  The newspaper industry failed to erect pay walls to control access to their content, and newspaper subscribers dropped print subscriptions to read everything online for free.  Cable industry control of content and distribution is key to protecting their business model for pay television.  More on that in a moment.

Now two other parties want to be heard on this matter — consumer electronics manufacturers and advertisers.

This week, Advertising Age is running a story on the implications of cord-cutting.

The magazine takes note that online viewing doesn’t require a computer any longer.  Samsung, Boxee, Apple TV, and even Microsoft, manufacturer of the XBox, are now selling devices that bypass cable television and grab online video for users, often for free.

Netflix has already managed that for a monthly fee, and is rolling out service on all sorts of devices, from a set top box that streams content from the web to your television to video game consoles, and now even builds-in the service to some televisions and Blu-Ray DVD players.  Microsoft’s XBox Live service could be germinating a cable television service of its own, as it seeks to license content from programmers starting with Disney’s ESPN.

All of these services, along with traditional laptop or home computer viewing, could evolve into formidable challengers for the pay television industry.  Oh, and some new televisions on offer at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show build in support for Skype, a Voice Over IP telephone service, so phone revenue could be at risk as well.

Advertising Age believes this could be one of the entertainment industry’s biggest business battles of the next few years as millions, if not billions of dollars are at stake.

For the moment, the public face of the debate is a combination of downplaying its potential impact while the players quietly position themselves and their assets for the fight certain to come.

Both Dudley and Britt at Time Warner Cable call the potential trend towards online viewing interesting, but not much of a threat at the moment.

“We see some interesting stuff out there, but right now people are watching more TV than ever; cable-cutting is largely on the fringe,” said Dudley.

“A lot of manufacturers have come out and made announcements, but I don’t think they really are in a position to erode the pay-TV subscriptions that the cable industry has today,” said Park Associates research analyst Jayant Dafari.

“For many people, cable works just fine; the quality is great; the DVR functionality is great; the only gripe they have is that they’re paying for it,” Boxee’s founder and CEO Avner Ronen told Advertising Age. But “there is a growing generation out there where the whole definition of entertainment is changing, and their main source of entertainment is the internet.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Wii At the Movies 1-13-10.flv[/flv]

CNBC covered last week’s announcement of a partnership between Nintendo and Netflix to provide Netflix on the popular Nintendo Wii, in this exclusive interview with Reed Hastings, chairman and CEO of Netflix and Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America president & COO (January 13, 2010 – 5 minutes)

‘If It Becomes A Problem, We’ll Just Cut Them Off‘

The cable industry is in a comfortable position to leverage its control over programming and distribution to ultimately limit any competitive threat from online viewing.  In addition to mega-deals like Comcast’s acquisition of content-rich NBC-Universal (a partner in Hulu), the cable industry owns, controls, or can leverage carriage of its cable lineup contingent on programmers not giving away too much for free.  Advertising Age:

One tech exec, who asked not to be named, predicted that the minute cable operators start to feel the disruption, they will clamp down and use their market power to keep TV and films from seeping into next-generation devices. They’re already putting the squeeze on networks; any free distribution is an argument for lower cable distribution fees.

Stop the Cap! is also a player in this struggle, because a key component of the cable industry’s control of programming is the means it is distributed to consumers, and cable modem service representss one half of the duopoly most Americans find when shopping for broadband.  One potential strategy to eliminating the cord-cutting option is to enact Internet Overcharging schemes like usage limits and consumption billing that effectively makes it impractical for a consumer to “switch” to broadband for all of their online viewing.  Switching to the other half of the duopoly may not be an alternative. As online video projects like TV Everywhere will also be available to telco TV partners who wish to participate, there is every incentive to also limit video consumption on Verizon’s FiOS or AT&T’s U-verse systems.

Effective competition against entrenched players in the marketplace is impossible if those players control the content, the means of its distribution, and the ability to cut you off if you watch too much or switch to an independent competitor.

But this is history repeating itself.  Many of the same players and interests followed the same protectionist path against another competitor – satellite television.  It took strong regulatory policy from Washington to force a fair and level playing ground for an industry that didn’t want to sell content to its competitors, overcharged for access, and kept effective competition at bay for years, all while happily increasing rates for beleaguered consumers.

Here we go again.

Broadband Reports noticed Comcast’s usage meter has broken out of its limited trial in Portland, Oregon and customers are receiving notices across the Pacific Northwest noting the company’s usage meter is now available for their ‘convenience.’  But remarkably, Comcast has told 99 percent of their customers they “do not need to check the usage meter” because they won’t be close to the company’s 250GB limit:

We are pleased to announce the pilot launch of the Comcast Usage Meter in your area. This new feature is available to Comcast High-Speed Internet customers and provides an easy way to check total monthly household high-speed Internet data usage at any time. Monthly data usage is the amount of data, such as images, movies, photos, videos, and other files that customers send, receive, download or upload each month.

Comcast measures total data usage and does not monitor specific customer activities to determine data usage. The current data usage allowance for the Comcast High-Speed Internet service is 250GB per month. This means that the vast majority of our customers – around 99% currently – will not come close to using 250GB of data in a month, and do not need to check the usage meter.

That leads to two questions: Why would a company make an effort to produce a meter that is irrelevant to the vast majority of customers, and why institute a usage cap at all if only one percent of customers come close to exceeding it?

The answer, of course, is that most customers won’t need to worry about the limit today, but tomorrow is another matter.

As more broadband users begin watching video over Comcast’s broadband service, they will come perilously closer to the fixed limit Comcast offers — a limit that protects Comcast’s cable television package from customers switching to broadband-based viewing.

Once Internet Overcharging schemes get their foot in your door, it’s usually only a matter of time before they force their way in and start looking for your checkbook.

Would Comcast seek to eventually lower today’s 250GB limit?  Perhaps, but there is no evidence of anything imminent.  It has been done before in Canada and sold as a “money-saver,” offered with an “insurance policy” Bell had the chutzpah to suggest “protected” customers from overlimit fees.  Monetizing broadband use is a hot topic for providers seeking enhanced revenue from their broadband divisions.  Time Warner Cable tried to convince customers it would tie revenue earned from its own Internet Overcharging experiment into expansion of their local broadband networks.  That was proven blatantly false when upgrades commenced in areas never part of “the experiment,” while those that were have been bypassed for DOCSIS 3 upgrades.

Some might believe such limits protect providers from dreaded hordes of malicious “bandwidth abusers,” a broadband urban legend comparable to the Cadillac-driving welfare queens we heard about in the 1980s.  In truth, the handful of so-called “abusers” have quietly been dealt with under the terms of existing Acceptable Use Policies for years without inconveniencing the vast majority of customers with arbitrary usage limits.  But the industry-sponsored narrative persists, usually in the form of some neighborhood hacking teenager sucking your bandwidth dry and costing you money.

What constitutes “excessive” or “fair” use ludicrously ranges from Frontier’s infamous 5GB usage allowance to Comcast’s 250GB limit.  Every company insists their limit is the fairest and that 99 percent of customers won’t exceed it, no matter what it is.

Are there consumers moving a lot of data across Comcast’s network?  Yes.  One Broadband Reports reader in Spokane posted a usage report showing a whopping 897GB of consumption in November.  Was he running a torrent client swapping an illicit copy of Avatar with people all over the world?  Was he downloading lots of illegally obtained music and movies?  Was he running a commercial business on a residential connection?  No.  It turns out he was retrieving a backup to restore data from a failed hard drive.  In fact, Comcast recommends customers use online backup services, and even provides customers with a free, limited version of Mozy, which includes an easy path to upgrade to much larger storage plans.

Even Comcast doesn’t believe in the usage-limits-solve-congestion meme. In response to a query from IP Democracy back in February, 2008:

“Most [ISPs] recognize that a metered approach doesn’t solve peak-hour usage pressures.”

But it will do wonders for a provider’s bottom line.

A Kennewick, Washington couple became so exasperated with Charter Cable’s unwillingness to fix a cable hanging off their roof and into their yard they finally called a local television station for help.

Over a seven month period, the Dunbar family contended with a series of broken promises from Charter to fix the problem, but the company never did.  Ralph Dunbar, 82, finally climbed on the roof himself to get the cable out of the yard where someone might trip over it.

“I don’t want it on the ground where a child or dog could get hurt or my meter reader. It doesn’t belong on the ground or it would have been there in the first place so I want it fixed,” Laura Dunbar told KEPR Action News.

Within hours of the station calling Charter, the problem was finally fixed.

Laura Dunbar remains upset it took a local television station to get Charter moving on their behalf, and KEPR reporter Chelsea Kopta called Charter looking for an explanation for the delay, to no avail.

“I called Charter headquarters in Phoenix with my questions,” Kopta reports. “By the close of business no one said they had time to answer my questions over the phone.”

John Miller, Director of Communications for Charter, later issued this statement:

We apologize for any concern this may have caused our customers or their neighbor.  We are pleased the issue has been successfully resolved for the Dunbars, who are long time Charter customers.

The story apparently drew enough attention the first day it was reported, the station’s follow-up report led the newscast the following evening.

Charter Cable recently emerged from bankruptcy reorganization.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KEPR Pasco Dunbar Family Endures Charter Cable’s Bad Service 1-4 and 1-5-10.flv[/flv]

KEPR-TV in Pasco, Washington ran two reports about the Dunbar’s ongoing problems with Charter Cable. (January 4 & 5, 2010 – 3 minutes)

We’ve heavily covered the proposed sale of Verizon landline service to Frontier Communications since the deal was announced last spring.  This should not come as a big surprise, considering Frontier Communications’ decision to insert a 5GB monthly usage limit in their Acceptable Use Policy in the summer of 2008 was what instigated the launch of Stop the Cap! in the first place.  Frontier’s decision was boneheaded at best in a city like Rochester with a very aggressive cable competitor only too willing to bash Frontier for implementing it if they thought it would win more customers.

But of course Frontier Communications’ Rochester operation is an anomaly for ‘rural America’s phone company.’  For the majority of rural customers, it’s far easier to slap customers around with a usage cap and 1-3Mbps DSL service when those customers have few, if any practical alternatives.  Unfortunately, there is real money to be made from their business plan serving frequently non-competitive communities with incrementally-upgraded “just enough” broadband service with unfriendly terms and conditions attached.

In several of the 14 states impacted by the proposed sale, the relatively small number of customers involved made it easy for regulators to quickly approve the proposal with few conditions attached. The deal flew under the radar and got scant press in most of these states.  Washington, Ohio, and West Virginia are another matter.  Regulators are taking a closer look at the deal in all three states where most of the controversy is taking place.  The deal is most contentious in West Virginia, where Verizon’s exit threatens to turn most of the state’s landline business over to Frontier Communications.

Stop the Cap! has been reviewing the public comments left on more than a dozen news sites, forums, and printed letters to the editor regarding the deal.  We’ve seen comments obviously coming from Frontier employees, union members, politicians, business leaders, and competitors.  But the vast majority come from ordinary consumers who have concerns about what the deal will do to their telephone and broadband service.  Most of the comments from consumers that embrace the sale don’t do so because they are fans of Frontier.  They simply loathe Verizon and want an alternative.  Boiled down, the consensus among those in favor of Frontier taking over is “let them try… they can’t do any worse than Verizon.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCHS Charleston PSC Phone Hearing 1-12-2010.flv[/flv]

WCHS-TV in Charleston covers West Virginia’s Public Service Commission hearings reviewing the proposed deal.  Frontier employees arrived in Charleston to lobby for the sale. (1 minute)

Desperate for Broadband

There are a lot of West Virginians who still have no broadband options.  Frontier claims Verizon provides only 60 percent of their customers with a broadband option — DSL service that tops out at 7Mpbs, if you live in an urban area.  Those that don’t have often waited years for Verizon to extend DSL service into their communities or neighborhoods.  It’s a problem common in mountainous, often rural states like West Virginia where infrastructure costs can be prohibitive.  Customers believe that Frontier Communications will tolerate a lower return on their investment providing DSL service to those customers Verizon ignored.

Promising to expand broadband service in rural, unserved areas is a common sales point for all of the prior Verizon sell-offs.  Hawaiian Telcom promised improved broadband service and speed.  Fairpoint promised to expand DSL availability to 75 percent of all access lines within 18 months of the sale, 85 percent within two years and 95 percent within five years.  Frontier Communications promises to expand broadband service as well, claiming they already provide 92 percent of their existing West Virginia customers with the option.  Of course, Hawaiian Telcom and FairPoint both reneged on their commitments before going bankrupt.  Frontier Communications hasn’t yet been held to any specific commitment or timeline in West Virginia as part of their proposed takeover of service.

To those suffering with dial-up or satellite fraudband, -any- broadband option seems like a miracle, even if it turns out to be 1-3Mbps DSL service with a 5GB allowance.  But as those kinds of anemic speeds arrive, cutting edge multimedia-rich broadband applications will become increasingly mainstream and leave these customers behind, again.  With a 5GB usage limit, it wouldn’t matter anyway, because customers will never be able to take advantage of services that will rapidly blow through those limits.  Make no mistake, a user’s broadband experience at 1.5Mbps with a 5GB allowance is going to be considerably different than a customer enjoying online multimedia from a cable provider or the next generation broadband service from Verizon FiOS or AT&T’s U-verse.  Think e-mail and basic web browsing, and that’s about all.

What kind of broadband experience does Frontier Communications bring?  This month, Consumer Reports rated Frontier dead last among DSL providers that own and operate their own broadband networks (subscription required).  The magazine rated 27 regional fiber, cable, and satellite providers and Frontier’s DSL ended up #19 on the list, the lowest rating of any DSL provider selling service on its own network.  Only Earthlink, which usually buys access on other providers’ networks came in lower among DSL providers.  Verizon actually scored higher than Frontier.

Frontier’s DSL service merited a 67 out of 100 score, rating only fair on value, speed, reliability, and customer support, based on 56,080 Consumer Reports subscribers who have a home Internet account.

Frontier’s phone service rated even lower, second to last in the survey.  Frontier was rated fair on value, reliability and call quality.  Only Mediacom did worse.  Verizon scored much better on reliability.  The magazine’s survey of phone companies was based on 37,484 respondents with phone service and was completed in the spring of 2009.

The consumer magazine did not recommend DSL for broadband access, suggesting consumers would do better with fiber optic broadband first, and cable modem service second.

Union Bashing – The enemy of my enemy is my friend

A significant minority of comments were focused entirely on union bashing, completely ignoring the specifics of the Frontier-Verizon sale.  All these people knew was that if the Communications Workers of America or other union was involved, they were the “real problem,” accusing union bosses of opposing the deal until they were paid off.

Nonsense.

Reality trumps anti-union talking points.  Consumers can review for themselves who correctly predicted the outcome of the last two deals of the recent past.  They were the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who accurately identified the service problems, the network transition problems, the debt load that prevented service expansion and upgrades, and the eventual bankruptcies experienced at Hawaiian Telcom and FairPoint Communications.  It turns out that asking front line employees who work in the office and out in the field maintaining the network are well positioned to give an honest assessment of these transactions that others seek to candy coat to get the deal done.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSAZ Charleston Frontier Defends Deal 1-12-2010.flv[/flv]

WSAZ-TV in Charleston delivered this decidedly pro-Frontier news report on the company’s efforts to counter opposition to the proposed sale. (3 minutes)

The Opposition

A large number of comments from those who oppose the deal believe they will actually be far worse off with Frontier.  Most relate the experiences of themselves or their friends and family who live in Frontier service areas, and they’re unhappy with Frontier’s poor customer service, reliability, and slow speed DSL.  Many were also unhappy with Frontier’s automatically-renewing contracts committing customers to stay with the company or face a steep early cancellation penalty.  Many more lament the lack of a future with Verizon fiber optics.

David Swanson, who blogs from his home in Golden Valley, Arizona just dumped Frontier for his local cable provider – Golden Valley Cable & Communications.  He says he was overpaying for Frontier’s DSL and phone package.  Together, after fees and taxes, $90 a month went to Frontier and $73 a month went to DirecTV for television service.  With his new cable bundle, he pays $100 a month for everything.  He uses Boost mobile for his phone, and has no need for a landline.

Reviews on DSL Reports aren’t exactly positive about Frontier either.

One Rochester customer isn’t happy with the “spotty service” he’s experienced on Frontier’s aging copper wire infrastructure, noting they don’t seem to be in any hurry to upgrade facilities in western New York.  He’s stuck with unreliable DSL service far slower than what Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner service can provide. Another customer in Lowville, New York admits he has to live with Frontier’s slow speed DSL because there is no other provider available.  In Kingman, Arizona one customer rated the company’s DSL service “slightly better than nothing.”

Even customers who had had good things to say about Frontier in forums often acknowledge their service simply isn’t a good value when considering the high cost charged for the slow speed received.

What Can Be Done?

At this point, it is critical impacted customers contact their state utility commission and state representatives and tell them this deal does not work for you.  It is true Verizon wants out of these service areas, and should they win the right to withdraw someone will have to assume control of landline operations in these communities.  But the terms and conditions for the company seeking to provide service should favor customers and not the Wall Street dealmakers.  Strict financial pre-conditions should be in place to guarantee the buyer is up to the task of providing service and upgrades.  Historically, it’s been far too easy to simply renege on the deal with a quick trip to Bankruptcy Court to shed the debt these deals pile on, and be rid of the service commitments that were part of the approval process.

A company that believes they’ll earn plenty from this deal should be spending plenty to provide quality broadband service starting at 10Mbps, not the 1-3Mbps service Frontier provides most of its rural service areas.  What chance do communities in West Virginia have to stay competitive in a digital economy that requires faster broadband access without the ridiculously low usage limits Frontier includes in their customer agreements?  In fact, usage limits and other Internet Overcharging schemes should be explicitly banned as part of any sales agreement.

Holding Verizon responsible for the outcome of deals that benefit them and their shareholders while sticking customers with a bankrupt provider must be considered.  An important component of past Verizon’s landline-dumping-deals involves the Reverse Morris Trust — delivering a tax-free transaction for Verizon and piles of debt for the buyer. That puts all the risk on ratepayers, lower level employees who are among the first to go when cost-cutting begins, and head-scratching regulators wondering where it all went wrong.  The only ones not doing any hand-wringing are Verizon’s accountants and the executive management of both companies who conjure up such deals.  That’s because they are rarely held accountable, and often win retention bonuses even while a company is mired in bankruptcy.

Regulators should insist Verizon play a fundamental role in insuring that customers are protected even after the deal closes, honoring commitments and financing operations should the buyer fail soon after the sale is complete.  Under these conditions, customers are protected and Verizon might think twice about structuring a deal that loads the buyer down in insurmountable debt.

“This deal is driven by greed — and we can learn from Northern New England’s and Hawaii’s experience to make sure it does not come to pass here or in the other 13 states,” said CWA’s District Two Vice-President Ron Collins, who has been leading the campaign in West Virginia.

A Torrington man wants a law empowering consumers to charge their cable companies “rent” for allowing their unwanted cable boxes to stay in customers’ homes.

“I’ve got to keep it warm, I’ve got to feed it electricity. If anything happens to it, I’ve got to pay $175,” Stephen Simonin shared with the regulatorily-toothless Litchfield County Cable Television Advisory Council.  “It’s absolutely insane,” he said before being elected chairman of the Council.

The Republican-American covered the converter box debacle, and the ongoing dispute between Cablevision and Scripps-owned HGTV and Food Network, thrown off the cable lineup on New Year’s Day.

The growing variety and intensity of disputes between consumers and largely deregulated cable operators may signal a growing backlash against the cable industry and its potential for a more regulated future.

In the absence of regulation, Simonin said, “it is like the wild west.”

Simonin lodged official complaints about his converter box long before his wife began griping about the absence of Food Network from the family television. State regulators are equally powerless to force cable companies to provide content without converter boxes, or specific channel offerings, as are the various cable advisory councils.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate, said he opposed the federal law that deregulated the cable television industry in 1996, and continues to oppose it.

“I have said again and again and again over the years, Congress not only stripped states of their power to effectively protect consumers, but also failed to provide for federal protections,” Blumenthal said. There “really is no effective oversight or scrutiny.”

Telecommunications company-owned equipment, and the rental fee income earned from it, can occasionally be a source for profit-padding, especially when providers don’t allow customers to purchase and own their own equipment.  Television sets were supposed to be designed to accommodate digital cable transmissions without a required converter box as the country adopted new digital television-capable sets, but consumer experiences with a cable-box-free CableCARD plug-in cards have been mixed.

“The situation is infinitely more complicated than that suggests,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president and CEO of Media Access Project. Schwartzman said about 90 percent of the televisions currently in use do not have the capability Simonin describes, though he agrees “companies like Cablevision are, in fact, monopolizing the set top box to their benefit.”

Schwartzman said the FCC has promised prompt review of a petition filed two weeks ago that demands consumers be allowed to purchase a converter box from a third party, rather than be forced to rent a box from their cable provider.

“This is a very active issue right now,” Schwartzman said.