Woe to those who forget to sign up for a wireless data plan from Verizon Wireless.

The cell phone provider recently sent a $16,000 bill to one Hot Springs, Arkansas family for wireless data usage racked up on a daughter’s phone the family didn’t cover with a wireless data plan.

Chris Brown couldn’t believe his eyes when he opened his phone bill online.

“The first thing I think of is, this thing costs more than my truck.  It cost more than a house payment, I couldn’t fathom it, it’s mind-blowing,” Brown told KLRT-TV.

This isn’t the first time this has happened.  A month earlier, the Brown family was billed $3,000 for similar usage and the family asked Verizon Wireless to shut off access to data services on the affected phone, but the charges kept on coming anyway.

Brown says once he got to look at the phone usage online, he saw that the phone was connected to the Internet when the family didn’t even know it.

Verizon Wireless offers tips to customers with children:

• Limit the times of day they’re allowed to make calls.

• Keep your kids from getting onto your own phone’s Internet by setting up a password.

• If you have a limited plan, you will get an alert and have to give approval before you exceed your number of kilobytes or megabytes for the month.

Of course, had Verizon Wireless followed through on what Brown asked for — shutting data access off altogether, none of this would have ever happened.

Other Little Rock customers, especially those forced to move from Alltel to Verizon Wireless, are running into similar experiences.

Among the horror stories:

“My son had the same problem. He was told he had unlimited internet usage and then received a bill for more than $7,000. Verizon had recorded a phone call from my son to customer service and that was the only thing that saved him. But it took more than 4 months and his phone service being disconnected twice before the situation was resolved.”

“I’m not a bit surprised at that ridiculous bill from Verizon! I had the same problem for months last year, to the point that I had to put unlimited texting on both my grandsons’ phones. Then to top that off, we got a bill that had goo-gobs of texting billed to my husband’s phone (to the tune of $9.30), which is rarely used at all. But, this is the killer–all the texts received on his phone were from Verizon, all 62 of them! As soon as my contract is up with them, I will be switching. All the time we had Alltel we never had any problems. The problems started as soon as Verizon took over.”

“I’m not one bit surprised by the ridiculous phone bill that the Hot Springs family received. I also received my first month’s bill from Verizon last year for over $1500. I almost had a heart attack. Verizon lowered the bill, but two months later, even though we carefully monitored the air time, we went over by four minutes and they charged me an additional $90. That was it for Verizon. They are a bunch of crooks. I hooked up to my local phone carrier for $34 a month and I haven’t had one problem since. Verizon should be investigated.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KLRT Little Rock Hot Springs family gets $16,000 cell phone bill 3-3-10.flv[/flv]

KLRT-TV in Little Rock reports on the Hot Springs family that got a $16,000 surprise bill from Verizon Wireless.  (3 minutes)

Time Warner Cable is offering mobile phone providers a solution to their clogged wireless networks — clog ours instead!

Business Week notes the cable company has been aggressively pitching its broadband network to cell phone companies in New York City, which can be used to transport cell phone calls and mobile data between cell towers and the providers’ operations centers.  The “backhaul” network cell phone companies rely on to move calls and data between the cell tower nearest you and your provider’s distribution network is often the source of the worst bottlenecks, especially when those networks are connected by standard copper telephone wiring, as many still are.

The more customers sharing a low capacity copper line, the slower your data speeds and greater the chance for dropped calls.  Although some providers have expanded their fiber capacity to reach busy cell towers, many more are still stuck with copper… until now.

Time Warner Cable’s offer to offload clogged cell phone networks onto the cable company’s broadband backbone has become extraordinarily profitable to the nation’s second largest cable operator.

In fact, it has become Time Warner Cable’s fastest-growing business after revenue tripled last year, Craig Collins, senior vice president of business services told Business Week.

We are talking $3.6 billion dollars in revenue in 2012 from wireless carriers alone, according to researcher GeoResults, Inc.

“Backhaul is a growth play that we are pursuing aggressively,” Collins said. “These mobile players want to get the bandwidth they need at a cost-effective price and our structure allows them to get that pretty seamlessly.”

U.S. smartphone use has grown almost 700 percent in four years, according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Mobile-data volume is more than doubling annually as people use devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Inc.’s new Nexus One to send photos, watch videos and surf the Web. When networks jam, consumers face dropped calls and may find they can’t access Web pages or TV, analysts said.

Apparently the “exaflood” scare theory that suggests broadband networks are becoming hopelessly clogged does not apply to Time Warner Cable, because the company easily found plenty of free bandwidth in metropolitan New York City to profit from wireless phone traffic.

Not to be outdone, Comcast expects $1 billion from the wireless backhaul gravy train over time, according to its February 3rd conference call with investors.  Comcast is in a unique position to help ease congestion in San Francisco, where the cable operator provides service to some of the same customers who wander the city with Apple iPhones on AT&T’s overclogged Bay Area network.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt doesn’t want to limit the potential revenue to just the wireless big boys — he wants to offer service to carriers large and small:

While Time Warner Cable declined to specify if AT&T, the lone U.S. carrier for the iPhone, is a customer, the New York- based cable company says it wants to sign carriers large and small. Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt alluded to AT&T’s extra iPhone traffic in a December conference call.

“They want to get that into a cable as fast as they can,” Britt said, referring to overloads. His company began leasing backhaul in 2008 and posted $26 million in sales last year, less than 1 percent of the company’s total sales. Collins declined to give a forecast for 2010.

All this, of course, comes ironically to those Time Warner Cable customers who were subjected to Internet Overcharging experiments from Time Warner Cable just about one year ago.  Apparently, the exaflood only applies to consumers who face enormous broadband pricing increases and/or usage limits because of “overburdened” broadband networks.

Not so overburdened that the company can’t make room for billions in new earnings from cell phone companies, of course.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Moffett Says ATT May Need Cable to Ease Network Jams 3-8-10.flv[/flv]

[Video Fixed!] Craig Moffett discusses wireless smartphone data usage trends and Time Warner Cable’s involvement in transporting mobile phone and data across its cable broadband network (5 minutes)

Customers across the country are growing increasingly annoyed with Mediacom, the nation’s eighth largest cable operator that scored rock bottom in this year’s Consumer Reports cable survey.

The complaints keep on piling up: unfulfilled service calls, uninformed customer service agents in the Philippines, poor quality service, and in one case, a supervisor more concerned about how a customer obtained her direct number than actually resolving the customer’s problems.

The fallout from irritated customers now extends beyond horror stories from some of the company’s 1.3 million customers in 22 states — it’s now costing the company rejection of extended franchise renewal agreements in some communities, and plenty of bad press.

Boone County, Illinois

Last spring, Boone County began discussions about renewing a cable franchise Mediacom had with the county for some 20 years.  Public meetings to discuss the renewal brought throngs of customers annoyed with Mediacom’s poor performance.

The Rockford Register-Star took up the story:

Candlewick Lake resident Roger McGee Sr. has been experiencing difficulties with his cable company since he moved to the gated community two years ago.

McGee, a former Huntley resident, said he’s spent more time trying to get resolutions to his cable and Internet issues than he ever imagined was possible. “Every single step of the way the customer service was horrible and mismanaged,” he said Wednesday. “I talked to Mediacom more than I talked to my wife in those three months.”

Mediacom representatives characterized the complaints as mere aberrations and suggested isolated complaints could be resolved without impacting the company’s franchise renewal.  But additional public meetings held later that summer illustrated Mediacom had problems in the north-central Illinois region where it provided service.  The Register-Star reported:

George Chorvat has experienced countless issues with Mediacom Communications, and he’s looking for relief. The Poplar Grove resident isn’t alone.

Chorvat attended the county’s second cable hearing Tuesday at the Belvidere Township Building along with roughly 20 residents to speak out about service woes and to provide input on the county’s nonexclusive franchise renewal, which is in the negotiation phase.

“You took away half of our movie channels and said it was OK because we had On Demand, but we do not and we’re paying the same price,” Chorvat said.

His challenge of the offerings provided by Mediacom was one of several problems residents said they face.

Some residents detailed months of waiting for maintenance cable wires to be buried underground. Others told of weeks without phone service or waiting at home for technicians to arrive for scheduled appointments only to find the cable company had canceled them.

Late last month, Boone County granted the cable company a one-year extension of its cable franchise, citing customer complaints as the primary reason for the short-term extension.  In addition, the county will hold a series of public meetings at three, six, and nine month intervals over the coming year to check on customer service concerns and how Mediacom responds to them before considering a five year franchise extension.

The interim extension also keeps Mediacom from using telecom-friendly legislation to obtain a franchise from the Illinois state government, bypassing local officials.  Statewide franchising in Illinois was the brainchild of AT&T, which wants to expand U-verse without having to answer to local communities.  Mediacom has the ability to hop on board the same provisions to avoid local control if local governments refuse to extend a franchise agreement.

“We need to make sure we keep some county control here,” board member Karl Johnson told the newspaper in February. “No matter how big we think we are here, they’re a whole lot bigger when they come through downstate.”

Johnson heard several complaints from Mediacom customers about missed appointments, incomplete wire maintenance, and some who went weeks without Mediacom phone or broadband service.

Springfield, Missouri

Cable customers who experience problems expect answers when calling customer service, but Springfield resident Nancy Walker found herself empty-handed after speaking with a Mediacom representative thousands of miles away — in the Philippines.

“I am really upset,” Walker told the Springfield News-Leader in February. “I want a local number I can call, not the Philippines.”

She finally resorted to calling the office number of a friend who once worked for Mediacom before that friend passed away.  A supervisor was more concerned about how she obtained that number than helping her, Walker said.

Mediacom disconnected its local call center about three years ago, and company officials admitted they route calls to call centers, including one in the Philippines.  Larry Peterson, regional vice president of Mediacom, said the company dropped the ball on Ms. Walker, finding the customer service she received “unacceptable.”  Peterson handed Walker his business card and promised any issues would be resolved.

For customers who do not have Peterson’s personal office number, many just have to take their chances.

Springfield’s Cable TV Advisory Commission, which actually holds almost no real power over Mediacom, thought the company could do better.

Commission member Rita Silic urged the cable company to find a way to route dissatisfied customer calls back to a local Mediacom representative.

Dave Iseman, editorial page editor of the News-Leader, opined Mediacom needs “a full-fledged apologetic jingle. And it better be a long one, considering the waiting time that can be necessary to phone in a complaint.”

Burlington, Iowa

The fact Mediacom rated near the bottom in Consumer Reports‘ latest ranking of telecommunications companies — 24th among 27 Internet providers, 15th among 16 television service providers and dead last among 23 telephone providers — didn’t escape the attention of Burlington-based newspaper The Hawk Eye.  The newspaper noticed local complaints were continuing to pour in about service quality and trouble reaching customer service.

Columnist Don Henry even wrote about his own personal experiences with Mediacom in December:

Mediacom last month took away the religious programming my wife enjoys: I guess she shouldn’t complain.

They also poked out one of C-SPAN’s eyes on Congress. The Nancy Pelosi House of Horrors remains fit for family viewing, but not the Senate Shell Game. No explanation of why and I watched both — but I’m not complaining.

We were satisfied with “expanded basic” — but Mediacom decided to improve our viewing experience by removing four channels and making us rent some new box gadget to see them, plus a few we didn’t need.

Lest you complain, you get one box free … until they automatically raise your bill a year later. Conservatives think God trumps Harry Reid, so our box went into Sandy’s exercise room. She’s not complaining.

Henry’s problems only got worse from there, including e-mail disruptions and other service outages.  He did what most customers do when their service is on the fritz — he called the cable company.  That turned out to be quite an adventure:

“For e-mail problems, press 1; otherwise, stay on the line.”

I pressed 1.

“For e-mail problems, press 1; otherwise, stay on the line.”

Burlington, Iowa

I pressed 1.

“For e-mail problems, press 1; otherwise, stay on the line.”

After maybe 10 replays, I disobeyed. I stayed on the line … and waited … and waited … until my patience wore thin enough to drive to the Mediacom office on Division Street. I talked to a rep who seemed blissfully unaware of any e-mail problems. It’s been over a day and I’m far from alone, I said.

“Well, nobody’s told us.”

Could you ask about it?

“I can’t do that.”

Could you at least adjust my bill for the lost service?

“I don’t know of that ever being done.”

You used to, when I could get someone by phone.

“Then you’ll have to call.”

Henry’s column struck a nerve among local residents, who flooded the newspaper with comments about their own horror stories, ranging from pesky squirrels chewing through fiber optic cables to tsunamis of spam after the company “improved” its e-mail service.

Phyllis Peters, communications director for Mediacom, admitted the company could improve its customer service, but decided to devote most of her attention to taking issue with… Consumer Reports‘ survey.  Peters wants customers to know Mediacom isn’t dead last in the country because the magazine didn’t ask customers about every cable provider in the United States.  She’s certain there are worse examples out there:

Peters said one reason the survey might rate Mediacom so poorly is because of the company’s ambition. Mediacom is the nation’s eighth largest cable company, and focuses on providing cable coverage to non-metropolitan areas. Expanding service over a large area means more fiberoptic cable and servers that must be monitored.

Peters said the top-ranking cable company Wow, which had top scores on almost every attribute in the ratings, serves a much smaller, consolidated area than Mediacom. Wow is the 12th largest cable provider in the country, and services parts of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Consumer Reports was enthusiastic about the company, but acknowledged its small size.

“We would like to be higher in the rankings. We’ve put a lot of effort into customer service, and we did add a lot of calling staff,” Peters said. “Those things have moved forward in a significant way, and it takes a while for perception to change.”

It may not always be easy to get a Mediacom representative on the phone, but the company offers the fastest Internet service in Burlington, she said. The company offers a standard download speed of 12 megabytes per second, and that service can be upgraded to 20 megabytes per second for a higher price.

Competition for Burlington residents’ broadband needs come mostly from Qwest, which offers most customers 1.2 Mbps DSL service, although the company can provide up to 7 Mbps in selected neighborhoods.

Max Phillips, president of the western Iowa division of Qwest, told The Hawk Eye he doesn’t know if the company will be able to provide higher speeds to Burlington in the near future.

“We have a long-term plan to bring higher speeds, but our business is constrained by the government model,” he said, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Carthage, Illinois

Mediacom has been out of luck securing a franchise renewal in Carthage because of ongoing customer complaints about the quality of service being provided to Hancock County residents.

Carthage has been without a Mediacom franchise agreement since the old one expired last June.

A proposed renewal was shot down by the city after a vote failed to approve it, citing reception complaints.  Mediacom has been asking the city for a franchise renewal ever since, but the city has resorted to four-month extensions, waiting to see what service improvements were forthcoming in the interim.

Mediacom installed new hardware in the community, which it felt would improve reception, and city officials were hopeful the noted drop in complaints reaching them was an indication of that.

But in February, complaints began arriving at the city’s doorstep once again.

Carthage Mayor Jim Nightingale said he heard two complaints right after the city council offered the latest extension.

Now he’s withdrawn the offer.

Mediacom can always appeal to the state of Illinois to seek a new franchise under statewide franchise laws, but discussions with city officials are continuing for now.

Prior Lake, Minnesota

Communities looking for competitive alternatives to Mediacom usually find phone companies who refuse to offer video service in Mediacom service areas, because the cable company typically chooses smaller communities where such “telco-TV” projects don’t meet the minimum Return On Investment requirements necessary to build them.  Some communities served by independent phone companies or are lucky enough to find a willing fiber-to-the-home provider are in better shape, unless the cable company files suit to stop such projects from moving forward.

The community of Prior Lake, twenty miles outside of Minneapolis, and its 16,000 residents are a case in point.

Last fall, Mediacom filed suit against Integra Telecom, a Portland, Oregon-based provider of competitive voice, broadband, and television service that won a franchise agreement to provide “telco-TV” in Prior Lake and nearby communities within its existing service area.

The suit claims city officials discriminated against Mediacom by not compelling Integra to meet the same terms and conditions Mediacom agreed to in a 1999 franchise agreement. Specifically, Mediacom wants Integra held to the same requirement it agreed to in defining its service area.  Because Integra is not planning on matching Mediacom’s service area house by house, Mediacom claims they are in violation of Minnesota law.

That suit is awaiting a hearing in the state Court of Appeals expected to begin this month.

The dispute between Mediacom and the city has led one state senator to write legislation clarifying the existing cable franchise laws in Minnesota.

Senator Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis), has introduced Senate File 2535.  The bill would allow telephone companies to provide competitive service within their natural service areas, instead of being required to match incumbent cable operator coverage areas.  For example, a cable company might serve a broader area where multiple phone companies provide service.  Under current state law, competing phone companies could be required to wire every area where the incumbent cable company provides service, even inside other phone company’s service areas.  Senate File 2535 recognizes the current telephone company service area boundaries as acceptable enough to proceed with a video franchise agreement.

Prior Lake City Manager Frank Boyles and Senator Claire Robling (R-Jordan), both testified in favor of the bill at a recent hearing held by the state Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, Technology and Communications. The bill was approved unanimously and now moves to the State and Local Government Operations and Oversight Committee, of which Robling is a member.

The League of Minnesota Cities is also calling on its members and the public to support SF2535 which could speed competition across Minnesota.

Text of Senate Bill 2535:

A bill for an act relating to cable communications; clarifying requirements for the granting of additional cable franchises; amending Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 238.08, subdivision 1.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Section 1. Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 238.08, subdivision 1, is amended to read:

Subdivision 1. Requirement; conditions.

(a) A municipality shall require a franchise or extension permit of any cable communications system providing service within the municipality.

(b) No municipality shall grant an additional franchise for cable service for an area included in an existing franchise on terms and conditions more favorable or less burdensome than those in the existing franchise pertaining to: (1) the area served; (2) public, educational, or governmental access requirements; or (3) franchise fees. The provisions of this paragraph shall not apply when the area in which the additional franchise is being sought is not actually being served by any existing cable communications system holding a franchise for the area. Nothing in this paragraph prevents a municipality from imposing additional terms and conditions on any additional franchises.

(c) An area for an additional cable franchise is not more favorable or less burdensome if the franchisee is a telephone company, as defined in section 237.01, subdivision 7, and the area of the franchise is no less than the area within the municipality in which the telephone company offers local exchange telephone service. This paragraph is in addition to and not a limit to the authority of a municipality to grant an additional franchise for cable service.

As predicted, Cablevision and Disney-owned WABC-TV New York reached a settlement of their dispute over retransmission fees, returning WABC-TV to more than three million Cablevision subscribers minutes after the start of the Academy Awards telecast.

WABC released a statement indicating a tentative agreement had been reached:

“ABC7 and Cablevision have made significant progress and have reached an agreement in principle that recognizes the fair value of ABC7, with deal points that we expect to finalize with Cablevision. Given this movement, we’re pleased to announce that ABC7 will return to Cablevision households while we work to complete our negotiations.”

Details of agreement were not released, but many expect WABC-TV will be paid 50-60 cents per month per Cablevision subscriber.

“It is a deal that is fair to our customers and in line with our other programming agreements,” Cablevision spokesman Charles Schueler said. “We are very grateful to our customers for their support and pleased to welcome ABC back.”

WABC-TV officially returned 8:43 pm Sunday, Cablevision said. The awards show began at 8:30 pm.

Rep. Eric Massa (D-New York), author of the Broadband Internet Fairness Act (HR 2902) — legislation that would ban Internet Overcharging, announced he will resign his office Monday.

In a fast-moving series of events, Massa first announced he would not seek re-election because of health reasons — the congressman faces a renewed battle with cancer, but allegations of ethical violations also surfaced earlier this week which have gotten national news coverage.

Massa is a first term congressman in New York’s 29th Congressional district, which has traditionally elected Republican candidates to office.  But as the national Republican party has trended further to the right, northeastern Republicans have become an endangered species in Congress.  Former Rep. Randy Kuhl only held onto the seat for two terms before being defeated by Massa in 2008.  Kuhl himself replaced retired congressman Amo Houghton, a long-serving moderate Republican whose voting record often split with the national Republican party on major issues.

Massa’s decision not to run for re-election surprised voters in his district, which runs from suburban Rochester to the Pennsylvania border along the southern tier.  Friday’s sudden announcement he’ll also resign his office effective Monday shocked voters and started a scramble for who might assume Massa’s seat upon his resignation.

The loss of Eric Massa to the Stop the Cap! cause is a concern for broadband consumers.  Massa stepped up to protect consumers from an Internet Overcharging experiment proposed last April by Time Warner Cable, which serves most of his district.  Massa immediately blasted the cable company’s plan to test usage-based billing on residential customers in the Rochester area, which is the only major city in New York State not served by Verizon and its expanding fiber to the home FiOS system.

Massa’s proposed legislation would have banned such schemes unless a company could demonstrate a clear financial need to adopt consumption billing and usage limits.

Thankfully, New York senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) remains in office, and is the only senator to protest Time Warner Cable’s experiment, and helped end it, not just for residents of western New York, but for residents of Texas and North Carolina as well.

As to the swirling of allegations surrounding Massa, I have no interest in expanding on them here.  You can get a detailed review of the congressman’s views on these issues by listening to a 90-minute radio show aired today on a WKPQ-FM in Hornell, New York.  Today’s show will probably break news because Massa expands in great detail what’s behind the allegations and the reasons for his retirement.

Eric Massa’s regular Sunday show on WKPQ-FM Hornell, NY today discussed his decision to resign his office in great detail. (90 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

As for his replacement, a number of Democrats from both the southern tier and Monroe County/Rochester are considering entering the race.  Massa’s already-campaigning Republican opponent, former Corning Mayor Tom Reed remains in the race.  The Republican county supervisor for Monroe County, Maggie Brooks, is also considering a run.  But so is the former Congressman Randy Kuhl.  “Randy the Dandy” would be the worst possible option.  His undistinguished record and contempt for his constituents makes my skin crawl.  In his last term, Kuhl refused to hold open town hall meetings, instead shepherding constituents in for ‘five minutes with Randy’ where someone took notes and another escorted you out when your time was up.  Nobody should have bothered to take notes — his ongoing lack of concern about what voters in his district thought helped him lose his seat in the first place.  His lack-of-listening tour would fit perfectly with certain cable companies who don’t listen to their customers.  Hopefully, voters will not contemplate a return of Randy Kuhl.  Four years was more than enough.

We’ll be looking for other members of Congress to take up where Eric Massa left off.  I would like to thank Congressman Massa for his hard work on behalf of our cause, as well as helping make a difference on so many other matters important to the voters in his district.  I wish him good health and best wishes.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Eric Massa Resigns Monday 3-6-10.flv[/flv]

Several television stations announced Rep. Massa’s decision to resign his office Friday in “breaking news” headlines.  This clip has three reports from WETM-TV Elmira, WHAM-TV Rochester, and WENY-TV Corning. (6 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Eric Massa Reactions 3-6-10.flv[/flv]

Residents in the 29th congressional district react to Rep. Massa’s resignation announcement, and local politicians jockey for position to potentially run for Massa’s seat.  Three reports are included from WHAM-TV Rochester, WROC-TV Rochester, and WENY-TV Corning. (6 minutes)