When people in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre noticed their neighbors in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh —  even Allentown were getting super high-tech fiber upgrades from Verizon, they wondered why northeastern Pennsylvania has been bypassed, left to contend with Comcast as the only cable company in town.

The Scranton Times-Tribune went to Verizon to find out why they snubbed the region.

Starting four years ago, Verizon made FiOS available in Philadelphia and surrounding counties, South Central Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh and even Allentown. Now the company wants to cultivate those market, said Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynski.

“We are focusing on the commitments we have,” he said. “No plans have been outlined for future expansion.”

Smaller local phone carriers don’t have the money involved in providing their own Internet television. Instead, those such as Frontier Communications, re-sell satellite service.

“Offering out television service is expensive, too expensive for most smaller telephone companies,” said telecom industry analyst Jeff Kagan. “So many are reselling satellite service to keep customers who want one bundle and one bill.”

Because of that, satellite television providers, who were never a formidable challenge to conventional cable companies, gained market share, Mr. Kagan said.

Verizon ended their FiOS expansion partly because of ongoing negative reaction from Wall Street.  Now with a change in CEO’s, things don’t look promising for upgrades anytime soon.  It was former CEO Ivan Seidenberg that green-lit the idea of replacing old copper wire networks with new state-of-the-art fiber optics.  Seidenberg got his start in the phone business as a cable splicer’s assistant, working with the copper wires and fiber-optic cables that are the backbone of today’s phone companies.

His successor, Lowell McAdam grew up in the wireless industry, which is increasingly responsible for Verizon’s revenue.

At a telecommunications crossroads, Seidenberg’s vision of fiber optic service replacing antiquated copper phone cables may be at risk from new leadership at the helm of Verizon — leadership that lives and breathes in a wireless world.

For phone companies, the choices are clear: suffer ongoing landline losses and hope wireless profits can cover the difference, sell off your landline customers to a third party that specializes in rural areas where wireless signal penetration is insufficient, or make required upgrades to stay competitive with cable companies that are also eroding your market share.

As far as the cable industry is concerned, they’d prefer Verizon just stay out of the video business altogether.  Dr. John “Darth Vader” Malone, a former cable kingpin that owned Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), said there is room for only one player in the wired video business — cable companies.

“I’ve never seen overbuilds work … it always ends up badly,” Malone has said repeatedly about cable competition.

So for northeastern Pennsylvania, and millions of other Verizon customers hoping for something better, prepare for a long wait.  Save for satellite services, your local cable company is likely to remain the only television service provider for the foreseeable future.

Time Warner Cable has unveiled a new logo that is softer on the eyes and gives greater emphasis to “cable” in the company’s new look for the fall of 2010.

The new logo delivers a brighter, more contemporary appearance and adopts a font that looks a lot like Stag Sans Round by Christian Schwartz.

The Time Warner eye and ear symbol remains, but is more tightly integrated into the new logo, which is more square than rectangular.

Although the new logo appears more easy on the eyes, the fact the company spent some serious money hiring design agency The Brand Union to come up with it will certainly raise eyebrows from irate subscribers facing another round of rate increases from the company starting in January.

At least Time Warner Cable’s new logo is unlikely to get the same reception as the disastrous logo change undertaken by The Gap.

“After dominating the late 1990s and early 2000s, Gap has dropped its iconic logo in favor of something that looks like it cost $17 from an old Microsoft Word clipart gallery,” a source at the Brand Channel said.

The Gap changed the logo back after a week of derision.

The city of Salisbury on Monday “soft-launched” its fiber to the home service Fibrant to the community of 27,000.  Fibrant joins Wilson’s GreenLight system in giving residents a real choice between Time Warner Cable and phone companies like AT&T, Windstream and CenturyLink.

But the launch did not come without controversy.

The system has drawn some complaints from beta testers about set top DVR boxes that are not working as expected, video channels that are not ready for launch, a porn channel controversy, and some negative anonymous comments that suspiciously draw from the well of telecom talking points complaining about Fibrant’s business model.

Yet Fibrant’s eager group of more than 100 beta testers may quickly become the service’s first paying customers, delighted with the exceptionally faster broadband speeds finally available in the community.

Indeed, some of the biggest complaints are that Fibrant didn’t arrive sooner and the speeds are not fast enough.  The city-owned service is still fighting its way to wire fiber optic cable on utility poles where its competitors have engaged in foot-dragging to move their existing cables to make room for Fibrant.  The company’s waiting list for sign-ups now numbers well into the hundreds.

Local media has been buzzing about Fibrant’s published pricing, which undercuts Time Warner Cable’s regular prices but not its promotional deals.  The cable company recently launched a national promotion marketing broadband, cable, and telephone service for $99 for the first year.  That’s about $45 cheaper than a comparable “deluxe” package from Fibrant.

Fibrant marketing director Len Clark told the Salisbury Post they cannot compete with those special deals.

“We can’t afford it,” he said.

But many municipal providers have turned these promotions upside down and told their potential customers their pricing does not come with tricks, traps, or temporary discounts that expire exposing customers to much higher prices down the road.

EPB, the utility provider in Chattanooga, has been successful with everyday pricing that beats Comcast and delivers far better service — faster broadband speeds, better picture quality, and no annoying Internet Overcharging schemes.

Clark hopes Salisbury residents will take notice that their temporarily higher prices include better quality service and faster broadband.

Also important: the money earned by Fibrant stays in Salisbury and could eventually help defray city expenses.

The Post explains the differences between the cable company and Fibrant:

The $99 special includes Road Runner High Speed Online with a download speed of 7 megabits per second and upload speed of .384 Mbps. For a limited time, subscribers can upgrade for free to Road Runner Turbo, boosting their Internet speed to 10 Mbps for downloads and .512 Mbps for uploads.

Fibrant’s standard Internet speed of 15 Mbps for both downloads and uploads is twice as fast as Road Runner High Speed Online and 50 percent faster than Road Runner Turbo. Fibrant customers can go faster — 25 Mbps up and down — for an additional $20 per month.

Both Time Warner’s $99 special and Fibrant’s comparable package offer about 150 TV channels. High definition is free for Time Warner subscribers, while Fibrant customers must pay more.

Time Warner’s package does not include a digital video recorder. Fibrant’s does.

However, people who sign up for the $99 Time Warner special this month get Showtime for free, Dan Ballister, director of communications for Time Warner Cable Charlotte said. Next month, it could be a free DVR, he said.

Time Warner’s phone service offered in the $99 deal has about a dozen features, including the popular caller ID that appears on the TV screen. Fibrant’s phone service offers 17 calling features.

Some area consumers and businesses expressed concern about Fibrant’s broadband speeds topping out at just 25Mbps, which is slow in comparison to many other fiber to the home providers.  They are also concerned the company did not more aggressively price services at launch.

Many municipal providers have learned from the mistakes of others who have tried to engage in all-out pricing wars with large cable companies.  Most cable companies can cross-subsidize rates to ridiculously low, predatory prices to win such pricing wars, making them untenable for municipal providers with bonds to pay back.  But at the same time, municipal providers are in serious danger or obliterating the marketing benefits fiber brings by not showcasing fiber’s capabilities and giving customers the motivation to throw their current provider overboard.  We urge Fibrant officials to consider reducing the price or increasing the speed of Fibrant’s 25Mbps service, which appears too expensive and slow priced at $65 a month.  It needs to be at least $10 less a month to make it an attractive alternative to Time Warner’s inevitable future speed upgrades in the area to 10/1 standard service and 15/2 for “turbo” service, commonly found wherever fiber competes.  Remember, Time Warner also markets “Speedboost” to consumers as though those temporary speeds are delivered consistently.

As EPB quickly learned, the “wow” factor can drive sign-ups, and they doubled their broadband speeds to get more bang for the buck.  Fibrant needs to remember the valuable marketing lesson of driving customers towards “sweet spot” premium tier pricing customers feel they got for a steal.  If 15Mbps service is $45 a month, how many would spring for 20 or 25Mbps for just $5-10 more?  Time Warner learned this selling their “turbo” speed package.  And most importantly of all, Fibrant risks harming their own argument fiber optics brings new businesses and jobs when their current price schedule shows speeds topping out at just 25Mbps.  Admittedly those are residential service offerings, but we encourage them to deliver faster speeds, especially to businesses.

The controversy about Fibrant carrying porn pay per view channels also popped up in the local media and drew complaints from conservative residents upset with their local government accommodating such programming.

Fibrant handily dealt with the controversy, noting tax dollars do not pay for Fibrant, it needs to compete with cable and satellite providers who offer such content, and Fibrant has gone beyond the competition in masking even the names of the channels to those who do not want such pay per view programming in their homes.

Time Warner Cable readily provides not only the names of the adult channels they carry, but also includes program titles that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.  And who can forget Time Warner accidentally promoted its adult content on a free on-demand children’s channel earlier this year.

Fibrant officials also said the right thing telling residents they absolutely do not want to be in the business of telling people what they can and cannot watch.  It’s a personal decision, and the provider will go out of its way to make sure customers who do not want such material coming into their homes need not see a single bit of evidence it’s there.

That goes a long way to ameliorating a politically sensitive issue.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WBTV Charlotte Fibrant Porn Controversy 10-12-10.flv[/flv]

WBTV-TV covered the controversy of Salisbury’s Fibrant service carrying adult pay per view programming.  (3 minutes)

A vocal minority of comments left on the Post‘s website have also attacked the service with a considerable amount of false information.  Some are upset with a $360 installation fee that actually will only be charged to a customer leaving within the first year of service.  Others invented monthly fees that don’t exist, and one actually wrote:

“The field is already crowded enough with Windstream, Time Warner, AT&T and a slew of decent wireless ops. The existing internet providers offer far better deals. Fibrant which was supposed to have high speed fiber optic, really doesn’t. Fibrant’s download speeds are not as fast as Time Warner and higher end Windstream. Fibrant doesn’t seem to want to compete pricewise or service wise–so why bother?”

Of course, Fibrant’s matched upstream and downstream speeds leave Windstream’s DSL gone with the wind.  Time Warner Cable currently delivers standard speeds half that of Fibrant’s lowest speed service (and as you can see in the video below doesn’t even actually deliver that), and AT&T’s U-verse maxes out under the best conditions at real world speeds below what Fibrant can deliver.  Anyone who has used wireless broadband knows speed is the first thing sacrificed.  Unlimited, unthrottled wireless broadband is second.  Fibrant needs some social networking to put out these kinds of BS brushfires before they become accepted memes.  Stop the Cap! helped, at least for today.

Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable officials used Fibrant’s launch to, once again, draw false connections between local government funds paying for a cable system that duplicates existing services.

Back to the Post:

Time Warner is still surprised by “municipal overbuilds,” or city-owned fiber optic networks like Fibrant in Salisbury and Greenlight in Wilson, Ballister said.

“It’s just interesting that during these economic times, when city and county budgets are being cut back, that they would want to spend millions of dollars providing services that are already out there,” Ballister said.

Salisbury borrowed $33 million to launch Fibrant.

Cities have an unfair advantage in offering communication services, Ballister said.

“We’re all for competition, as long as people are on a level playing field,” he said.

Cities pay no property or income taxes. They can operate the utility at a loss and cross-subsidize from other areas of government, Ballister said.

“They can level taxes on citizens to recover their operating costs,” he said.

Fibrant is expected to operate at a loss for three years and have a positive cash flow by year four. It will take longer to make a profit, Clark said.

Eventually, Fibrant is supposed to generate revenue for the city.

Cities in the fiber optic business also can hike the fees their competitors must pay to get access to their subscribers, Ballister said.

“They are the gatekeepers to rights of way and pole attachments,” he said.

The company has no specific examples of fee hikes to hurt Time Warner, but “these are valid concerns that exist right now,” Ballister said.

It’s ironic Ballister complains about utility pole fees considering Fibrant is currently a victim of Time Warner’s slow progress making space on those poles to accommodate the city’s fiber optics.  No vendetta by city officials is apparent, as they patiently wait for the cable company to handle its responsibilities.

Ballister should not be surprised the city of Salisbury did for itself what Time Warner Cable refused to do in the community.  Just like in Wilson, Salisbury city officials pleaded with the cable company to deliver improved service in the community but it fell on deaf ears.  Many sections of the city center cannot access reliable broadband from the cable company to this day.  But most of them can now get service from Fibrant.  Cable companies like Time Warner have spent millions of subscriber dollars trying to legislatively ban networks like Fibrant, fearful of the competition they can bring.

Salisbury Assistant City Manager Doug Paris notes the enormous amount of money poured into North Carolina’s state legislature trying to ban projects year after year.  That Time Warner money could have made a real difference for residents and small businesses in Salisbury and other parts of North Carolina if used to improve service, not fight competition.

Kirk Knapp of Tastebuds Coffee and Tea doesn’t care what Time Warner does with the money at this point, so long as he can finally be liberated from them.  He told the Post he feels “held hostage by Time Warner.”

“Time Warner has the worst customer service I have ever dealt with,” Knapp said in an e-mail to the Post.

“Fibrant may have these same kind of issues, however I can actually go to the source to deal personally with someone who is vested in the community, not spend two hours on the phone and never solve the problem as I do with TWC,” he said.

“Even if pricing is higher, I would make the change. Price is important, but quality and service is tantamount.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Fibrant Intro 11-2-10.flv[/flv]

Folks from the Walser Technology Group, Inc. in Salisbury gave an informal introduction of Fibrant on its YouTube channel, including a very revealing speed test comparing broadband service from Fibrant with Time Warner Cable.  (7 minutes)

While ivi enjoys the fruits of the Cablevision-Fox dispute which drew suburban New Yorkers to sign up for service, another “online cable system” with an even more obscure reputation in North America has launched live “HD-quality” streams of British television, most of the major television stations in Los Angeles, and hardcore porn.

FilmOn, the brainchild of British billionaire Alki David, has been in beta for at least a year — until ivi stole a lot of its potential thunder by selling access to network stations from Seattle and New York City for $4.95 a month.  Since ivi’s arrival, FilmOn has taken off the “beta” label and opened their service to all-comers.

We’ve been playing with FilmOn for about a month ourselves here at Stop the Cap!, but have not written about it until now because the service operates like a moving target.  Yesterday’s channel lineup may be quite different the next day, and pricing has changed at least twice for the service in a matter of weeks.  While the service says it’s not in beta, it sure feels like it.  So, with this in mind, we present a brief review of the service as it exists today, the 2nd of November.  Don’t blame us if the channel lineup has changed since.

FilmOn has a bigger reputation in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom where British viewers hunger for access to America’s latest series and specials.  Getting access to FilmOn’s beta test was a badge of honor for many English speaking European beta testers craving direct feeds from CBS, NBC, and ABC stations in the United States.  Now Anglophiles on the other side of the pond looking for direct access to British television can now watch it live.

FilmOn uses its own free HDi player, which incorporates a viewing window, channel lineup, programming guide, and facilities to schedule recording shows for later viewing.  The player also includes authentication to protect the streams from unauthorized viewing, a bit of irony for many of the channels on the lineup which gave no authorization to be there in the first place.

The player software and layout is more advanced than ivi, and FilmOn’s picture quality is far superior to what we saw when viewing ivi’s streamed content.  However, FilmOn’s streams are far more likely to suffer from interruptions and buffering problems, and higher picture quality does not mean much if your favorite show sputters to a halt every 10 seconds or so.  That happened a lot with Los Angeles area signals on the channel lineup, especially in the evening.

The software allows users to increase the video buffer size, presumably to reduce re-buffering video pauses, but we found little difference in video quality regardless of how we configured it.  FilmOn either needs more robust American servers or allow the player to adapt to real world Internet connection quality by temporarily reducing the video encoding rate to deliver a stable signal.

FilmOn’s channel lineup changes regularly — way too regularly.  Since we started testing, entire groups and segments of channels have disappeared, returned, disappeared again, and many are back once more.  This is the biggest flaw FilmOn delivers to its paying subscribers, who simply cannot count on channels sticking around for long.  This is an issue FilmOn must address.  Paying customers don’t mind new channels being added to the service, but sudden removals will alienate them very quickly.

Like ivi, the centerpiece of FilmOn is delivering network broadcast station feeds.  Unlike ivi’s reliance on New York and Seattle-area stations, FilmOn prefers Los Angeles for its lineup.  That’s a definite improvement over Seattle area stations for Pacific time zone viewers.  But keep in mind Los Angeles stations are notorious for breaking away from regular programming to cover tragedies that regularly seem to impact southern California, from crazy car chases with Hollywood celebutards to the region’s various natural disasters.  While that is a plus for news junkies, someone seeking out a network show may find it interrupted by breathless reporters covering the latest wildfire, flood, earthquake, civil disturbance, or… killer bee attacks.

FilmOn Channel Lineup

KCAL-TV Los Angeles: KCAL is an “independent” station in Los Angeles delivering huge blocks of news programming to southern California audiences.  KCAL’s original reputation was its strong news coverage beyond Los Angeles, especially in Ventura County, the Inland Empire, and Orange County.  Although coverage of major breaking Los Angeles news events remains a hallmark of KCAL, the station is today owned by CBS, and is secondary to KCBS-TV.

KTLA-TV Los Angeles: KTLA was Los Angeles’ only true superstation, although it was seen mostly on cable systems in the western half of the country.  It used to be an independent station, but today is affiliated with the CW television network, which almost seems beneath it.  KTLA has an exceptional evening newscast and is well known for its coverage of major breaking news, but with the CW’s youth focus, the station’s news coverage has been dumbed down, especially in the morning.

KCBS-TV Los Angeles: The area’s CBS affiliate, KCBS partners with KCAL-TV in newsgathering.  Since the station is owned outright by the network, unless breaking news occurs you are certain to get all of the CBS lineup from KCBS.  The station has a lot of resources to cover breaking news stories, even after budget cuts reduced the news staff.

KVCR-TV San Bernardino: The Inland Empire’s PBS affiliate.  In large cities like Los Angeles, multiple PBS stations are not uncommon, typically sharing some major programming while different stations specialize in different programming at other times (educational, current affairs, nature, etc.)

KPXN-TV San Bernardino: The area’s Ion-TV affiliate, delivering religious and family-oriented programming.  Ion stations generally do not produce locally originated programming.

KTTV-TV Los Angeles: Fox’s Los Angeles affiliate delivers all of the Fox lineup and classic laid-back Los Angeles-style news coverage, especially in the morning.

KCOP-TV Los Angeles: KCOP used to be an independent station, but today serves as Los Angeles’ MyNetworkTV affiliate.  The station’s strongest years are now well behind it.  Today, it’s a dumping ground for a lot of shows other stations won’t take.  Fox owns the station, which means Fox shows occasionally air on KCOP during breaking news events being covered live on KTTV.

KNBC-TV Los Angeles: The area’s NBC station delivering the full lineup of NBC shows.

KOCE-TV Huntington Beach: Orange County’s local PBS station used to be considered a secondary PBS affiliate for Los Angeles, airing only about a quarter of the PBS lineup.  But on January 1st, KOCE will become LA’s most important PBS station as KCET-TV goes “independent.”

KABC-TV Los Angeles: The ABC station for Los Angeles, which includes a strong local newsgathering operation.

Universal Sports: The digital sub-channel network usually found on NBC stations carries an all sports format.

4 Music: An on-demand music video channel broadcast from the UK.

Scuzz: A British music video channel covering hardcore and metalcore genres.

Flaunt: Originally a dance music video channel targeting a LGBT audience, today the network delivers electronic dance music to all audiences.

Bloomberg: The well-known business news channel comparable to CNBC or Fox Business.

RAI Sport: RAI is Radiotelevisione Italiana, Italy’s public broadcasting network.  RAI Sport delivers Italian-language sports news and live coverage of soccer, motor-racing, and a range of other sports from southern Europe.

Dubai Sports: Emanating from the United Arab Emirates, Dubai Sports carries Arabic language coverage of sports ranging from extensive soccer coverage to camel racing.

Viva: is a music and entertainment channel serving the UK and the Republic of Ireland, owned and operated by MTV Europe.

Russia Today: Russia Today is the video equivalent of the Voice of Russia World Service on shortwave, delivering programming in English, Russian, Arabic and Spanish.  Funded primarily by the Russian government, the channel broadcasts a news-heavy diet of shows that speak to respective target areas.  For example, the network carried an extended interview with Ralph Nader commenting on today’s elections in the United States.  The channel tries to avoid blatant propaganda in their broadcasts, but has no problem celebrating Russia’s accomplishments and its importance in world affairs.

Sky News: The British news channel from the company that brought America Fox News Channel.  Less overtly biased than its American counterpart, its investment in international newsgathering and need to keep up with competition from the BBC has garnered the news channel considerable respect for the depth and breadth of its coverage, especially of live events.  But its political coverage definitely swings to the right.

BBC News 24:  The domestic 24/7 news channel from the BBC.  Similar to CNN, this news channel targets news of interest to domestic British audiences.  Very highly respected for its sober news coverage and unflappable anchors, many of whom are well-known to any BBC viewer.

TVE Spain: Spain’s state-owned public broadcaster delivers current affairs and entertainment programming from Madrid to a global Castilian Spanish-speaking audience.

CNN International: The external service of CNN, targeting global audiences outside of the United States with a heavy diet of international news typically delivered by anchors without American accents.

Clubland TV: A unique British music channel entirely devoted to on demand viewing of video tracks from the Clubland series.  It’s almost entirely dance music oriented and beats the pants off MTV Europe’s dance music channel in the ratings.

E4: This channel is like the British version of the CW, targeting youth audiences with shows aimed at teen viewers.  It airs a heavy diet of shows acquired from American networks, some in current runs (Glee) and others in reruns (Friends, Beverly Hills 90210).

CBBC/BBC Three: The BBC’s children’s programming network delivering shows of interest to viewers 16 and under.  (Also see BBC Three.)

JSC Sport Global: Also known as Al Jazeera Sports, this network delivers Arabic speaking audiences some of the most popular sporting events, having acquired the rights to major soccer league coverage.  Operated from studios near Doha in Qatar, most of the anchors are dressed in traditional thawbs.

Film 4: A British channel devoted to movies — traditional and current, without editing them to pieces or slapping on-air graphics and logos all over the screen.

ITV: FilmOn delivers the three network suite of channels from the commercial ITV network.  ITV1 is the original ITV network delivering the network’s most popular British shows.  ITV2 depends on mostly on series and shows imported from the United States.  ITV3 targets over-35 audiences with repeats of classic ITV series and American reruns like Quincy, M.E.

BBC: FilmOn also carries all four BBC entertainment channels, which include:

• BBC One: The flagship channel of BBC television, bringing the hallmark of BBC produced programming to audiences.
• BBC Two: More edgy than BBC One, new untested British series often turn up first on BBC Two.  Two also more closely represents today’s multicultural Britain, and major segments of airtime are turned over to locally-produced broadcasts from the BBC’s regional TV broadcast centers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
• BBC Three: Shares time with youth-focused CBBC, BBC Three starts programming in the evening hours targeting audiences from 16-34 years old.  Almost all of its content is produced domestically or from Europe.
• BBC Four: This BBC network targets highly educated viewers with intelligent documentaries, highbrow entertainment, current affairs, art and science programming, and international foreign language imports.  Although respected for the depth of programming, critics occasionally make fun of BBC Four’s interest in obscure or narrowly targeted programming.

Channel Five: Britain’s lowest rated channel delivers lots of American reruns and shows that others have rejected.  The network has garnered about as much respect as MyNetworkTV has in the United States, and is derided as an economic mess.  The network has been sold several times, and is now owned by tabloid newspaper publisher Richard Desmond, who is pouring money into the venture.

One genre of programming FilmOn airs that ivi doesn’t touch is adult entertainment.  FilmOn currently has two hardcore porn channels — Adult XXX and Filthon XXX Latina.

Pricing for FilmOn services runs $9.95 per month (or $99 a year) with adult channels priced $5.00 per month extra.  FilmOn promises to beef up its Spanish language programming shortly with the addition of Los Angeles stations Azteca América (KAZA), Telemundo (KVEA)
 and Univision (KMEX).

A company spokesman said FilmOn is also available through mobile smartphones and will work on 3G networks without an app download.

In the coming weeks, FilmOn plans to add local stations from New York, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Houston, and Seattle, which may give ivi some serious competition.

Still missing from the lineup are digital mini-networks like Retro TV which air classic TV shows.  Also missing, but perhaps not relevant to FilmOn’s marketing are Canadian networks like the CBC, Radio Canada, Global and CTV.

Something else missing is permission from any of these stations and networks to be included on FilmOn’s lineup, something it shares in common with ivi.

All of the major networks filed suit in September against FilmOn.com in the US District Court for Southern New York demanding a restraining order to stop the streaming as well as demanding damages.

Remarkably, FilmOn’s parent company is publicly traded on the German stock exchange and has been operating in Europe for over a year with few problems.  But running into a brick wall of entertainment conglomerates in the United States may require FilmOn founder Alki David to spend some of his billions to fight his way through a torrent of litigation.  Even if the courts see David’s company clear, the next step will be fighting the inevitable, well-financed lobbying campaign to get Congress to enact legislation to ban such enterprises (unless those doing the lobbying own and control them).

For now, FilmOn’s player provides extensive free previews of their content so feel free to explore.  But don’t get too hooked on any of FilmOn’s channels.  What you see today may not be around tomorrow.

Yet another telecom industry-backed front group claiming to represent the interests of small businesses managed to get its very-predictable opposition to Net Neutrality published in this morning’s Washington Post.  That is a small achievement considering the newspaper’s editorial page that increasingly promotes Big Telecom’s agenda.

This time it was the AT&T-sponsored “Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council,” which the Post claims is a “nonpartisan advocacy and research organization dedicated to protecting small business and promoting entrepreneurship.”  Hardly.  More on that later.

Karen Kerrigan is president, chief executive — and head regurgitator of the same false talking points AT&T and others have used to oppose Net Neutrality from the start:

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to impose new rules on the Internet using an outdated regulatory regime originally designed for the monopoly telephone system of the 1930s.

[…]Essentially, government regulations and bureaucrats would now direct how traffic over the broadband Internet flows rather than privately managed networks — they would also dictate what type of speeds, services and prices consumers should have (one size fits all) rather than let the market and innovators determine those things.

[…]Net neutrality rules would give the FCC new powers to micromanage the operations and pricing and service levels of the privately owned and financed broadband networks that are the physical heart of the Internet. This is a strategy for chasing away the billions of dollars that broadband network operators (principally the telecom and cable companies) plan to invest in broadband infrastructure and new technology.

Of course, the “outdated regulatory regime” we’ve heard about from AT&T repeatedly is not coming along for the ride in broadband reform… only the authority to provide an effective checks-and-balances system for the marketplace duopoly most Americans find when shopping for Internet access.  Nothing about Net Neutrality dictates speeds and prices consumers pay for broadband.  Considering the United States continues to lose ground in broadband rankings, all of the innovation the SBE claims would be lost was never here to lose.  It has been in South Korea, Japan, and increasingly eastern Europe.

Net Neutrality does not micromanage operations, pricing, or service levels.  In fact, it is the most simple, easy to understand government proposal around.  It states simply that broadband providers will treat all websites equally, will not run toll booths to extract extortion payments from content producers to guarantee their material won’t be artificially slowed down or blocked, and guarantees no provider censorship.  The industry’s claims that Net Neutrality will harm investment is phoney-baloney from the phone and cable companies.  They’ve earned fat profits in a Net Neutral-world for a decade.  But now decreasing interest in landlines and cable TV service means they’re trolling for more revenue, and they think they’ve found an untapped goldmine setting up toll booths on the Internet.

In Kerrigan’s world view, not allowing AT&T and Verizon to install paywalls, speed throttles, and establish paid special relationships with big businesses harms small businesses.  To prove her case, Kerrigan quotes Evelyn Nicely, president of Springfield-based Nicely Done Kitchens:

“Small businesses such as ours depend on every tool we can use to succeed. Undoubtedly, our strongest ally in terms of client communication, marketing, and product specifications comes from the use of broadband and the Internet. It has given us the ability to compete with anyone, even the larger and better-funded players in our industry, through our Web site and its innovative tools, which enable us to effectively market our services to the public.”

Of course, nothing in Nicely’s comments opposes Net Neutrality.  In fact, such important broadband reform preserves the strongest ally her business has — a free and open Internet that lets her compete with far larger players on an equal, level playing field.  The biggest threat to that level playing field is not passing Net Neutrality.  It would allow companies like Lowes or Home Depot to become paid, preferred content partners with broadband providers who could direct Ms. Nicely’s potential customers not to her website, but to them.  Large companies who can afford the price will find their ads splashed on broadband provider-home page portals that deliver customized web searches, preferred partner online ads and error redirection pages that can send customers who may mistype Nicely’s business name to her direct competitors.

How Nicely could ultimately manage to keep her business open in a broadband world where special favors can be bought and delivered should be a major concern for her and every other small business.

It’s no concern of the SBE, whose corporate backers keep this front group up and running.  But then it’s not the friend of small business it claims to be, and it’s hardly a “council.”

Before discovering the money that can be made parroting talking points for big cable and phone companies, Kerrigan was shilling for Big Tobacco, getting substantial contributions for her Small Business Survival Committee (a/k/a Small Business Survival Foundation) which received more than $100k from Philip Morris, hardly a small business at the time.

The SBE knows how to attract media attention through catnip-like “scorecards” that rank elected officials based on just how friendly they are to SBE’s benefactors.  The group and its leaders are darlings of conservative political media.  Their views see Communism anywhere individuals collaborate on their own in a way that costs big business profits.  Its chief economist even saw Borg-socialism in the concept of “open source” software:

“In the software universe, something similar to the Borg from ‘Star Trek’ seems to be at work,” declared SBE’s Raymond J. Keating. “It’s called open source software distributed under an agreement known as General Public License (GPL). If you recall, the Borg are ‘Star Trek’ bad guys. They’re basically evil bureaucrats with skin problems, who assimilate every species they come in contact with throughout the universe. Societies are wiped out. Individual thought and creativity are extinguished as individuals are absorbed into a collective. Something similar could be said of GPL-based open source software.”

An impartial, fair observer of telecommunications policy for small business the SBE is not.

Unfortunately, the Washington Post, whose parent company owns cable operator Cable One, has little incentive to see through the SBE’s haze of telecom industry-inspired talking points.