More than 300,000 residents from Louisville to Lexington in Kentucky and north into Indiana were left with no cable service for more than nine hours today after an equipment failure at an Insight Communications office on Okolona Road wiped out analog cable.

Louisville cable viewers channel flipping up and down the dial found nothing but frozen pictures, a captured moment in time from 2:53am this morning.  What they found next when calling Insight was nothing but hours of busy signals.  Some customers in southern Indiana found some channels worked fine while others did not.  In all, the outage impacted at least some channels across most of Insight’s service area in Kentuckiana.

Louisville, Kentucky

Insight initially blamed the problem on a router failure that developed during routine overnight maintenance.  A backup router also failed at the same time.  Company officials originally anticipated service would be restored by six this morning, but that did not come to pass.

Because the equipment failure had never been seen before by Insight technicians, it took nearly nine hours to finally resolve the problem.  Local television stations were deluged with calls from viewers wondering what happened to their favorite shows, and Insight’s dropped ball was topic number one on most local talk radio programs today.

Insight subscribers were especially upset that they couldn’t reach the cable company for answers.  Customer service lines were left jammed through much of the day.

Insight spokesman Jason Keller apologized for the outage.

Subscribers either saw this message, or a frozen picture across their channel lineup this morning.

“Everything that we have has a redundancy built into it. This is no different, but unfortunately on this particular morning with this particular piece of equipment, both the main equipment and the backup did not function properly,” Keller said, calling the outage “highly unusual.”

Keller called today’s outage the largest that he has seen during the company’s 10 years of service in Louisville.

By 10:00am, Louisville customers had their HD channels back, with the remaining analog channels restored by 1:30 this afternoon.

Despite the severity of the outage and its widespread impact, Insight Communications is refusing to issue blanket refunds to affected customers.  Instead, individual customers have to call or contact the company and request a refund, which they characterize as an amount under $1.00.

Customers can cost Insight more than that just by availing themselves of that option, and registering their displeasure over today’s long-lasting outage.

Impacted customers can request a refund online or by phone at (502) 357-4400.

Most television newscasts in the Louisville area treated today’s outage as their top news story, with several issuing periodic updates throughout the morning into the afternoon about the service problems.

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WAVE-TV in Louisville told viewers “it’s not our fault” that Insight subscribers couldn’t watch the station for at least nine hours today.  (2 minutes)

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WLKY-TV in Louisville said it received tons of calls from concerned viewers, one of whom was upset that the company “doesn’t want to give customers answers.”  (2 minutes)

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WHAS-TV, also in Louisville spent time outside of WHAS Radio’s studios this afternoon covering angry reactions from Insight customers on local talk radio.  (2 minutes)

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WHAS followed up its earlier report with a wrap-up during its early evening newscast explaining what caused the nine hour outage.  (3 minutes)

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WDRB-TV in Louisville explained to its viewers how they could get their money back for a day’s worth of frozen pictures.  (2 minutes)

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wins the Cowardly Lion Award for reports he's set to sell out American consumers for corporate interests

The Washington Post this morning reports FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is preparing to sell out a free and open Internet by adopting a provider appeasement policy that would abandon consumers and broadband users to the whims of big telecom companies.

In an extraordinarily disappointing move by the Obama Administration, which promised to adopt Net Neutrality and better broadband service for consumers, political expediency and typical Democratic party cowardice are likely to derail any hope for adopting consumer protections for the Internet.

Three sources at the [FCC] said Genachowski has not made a final decision but has indicated in recent discussions that he is leaning toward keeping in place the current regulatory framework for broadband services but making some changes that would still bolster the FCC’s chances of overseeing some broadband policies.

The sources said Genachowski thinks “reclassifying” broadband to allow for more regulation would be overly burdensome on carriers and would deter investment. But they said he also thinks the current regulatory framework would lead to constant legal challenges to the FCC’s authority every time it attempted to pursue a broadband policy.

Genachowski is living in a dream world — the non-reality-based community — if he believes for a second the nice telecom industry will happily go along with his plans for better broadband while leaving the current anti-competitive duopolistic framework of deregulation in place.

Telling a multi-billion dollar broadband industry to keep their paws off content and preserve an open and free network would be burdensome… for Stalin.  It should not be for AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.  If it is, that is why we are supposed to have checks and balances to protect Americans from a corporate oligarchy.  But money talks, and despite all of the repeated promises from President Barack Obama to preserve an open Internet, once the political pressure gets applied and the Money Party of corporate contributions gets going, you can always count on these people to cave in the end. “What Net Neutrality promise?”

Stop the Cap! supporters, with the help of a few “get it done” elected officials and other consumers who stood up and said “no more” to Time Warner Cable and the North Carolina legislature, managed to beat back Internet Overcharging experiments and corporate-friendly legislation to ban municipal broadband networks.  We accomplished both in a matter of weeks last year.  What was our secret?  Integrity.  We’re not behest to corporate lobbyists and industry-funded think tanks who hold the keys to post-administration job opportunities with super-sized salaries.  The Obama Administration and its appointed FCC chairman seem utterly impotent to do what a regulatory agency is supposed to do — regulate.  We might as well have Neville Chamberlain as FCC Chairman, because consumers are starting to feel a bit like 1938 Czechoslovakia, about to be sold out for peace inside the Beltway.

Readers, we will not be Julius Genachowski’s Tylenol.  To the contrary.  Chairman Genachowski appears exceptionally naive to believe he can enact any of his broadband policies over lawsuit-happy big telecoms that will promptly have them tossed out in court rulings.  If you and I already know this, why doesn’t he?  We need bold action, not policy capitulation.  Perhaps it’s time to replace the chairman with someone who isn’t afraid to do the job.

It always shocks me when we elect an administration to lead on the issues it pursues during an election, and then cowers in fear and abandons the American people the moment some lobbyists turn up the heat and start handing out checks.  Even when the overwhelming majority of Americans want a free and open Internet, somehow a handful of bureaucrats in Washington are too afraid to actually get the job done.

“The telephone and cable companies will object to any path the chairman takes,” said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, told the Post. “He might as well take the one that best protects consumers and is most legally sound.”

It’s too bad that is considered the radical solution in a lobbyist-infested Washington.  It looks like we’re going to need to start counting the money and making it clear in no uncertain terms that abandoning consumers means we’ll abandon them at the next election.

Marvin Ammori, a CyberLaw Advocate:

If the Post story is predictive, there is almost no list of “horribles” that are not fair game. I’m listing ten. Most of these “horribles” have actually happened as business practices where the carriers got their way. And media companies are believed to refuse ads or stories that criticize them or oppose their position.

Comcast (or AT&T or Verizon or Time Warner Cable) could do any of the following and the FCC could do Big Fat Nothing:

(1) Block your tweets, if you criticize Comcast’s service or its merger, especially if you use the #ComcastSucks hashtag.

(2) Block your vote to the consumerist.com, when you vote Comcast the worst company in the nation. No need for such traffic to get through.

(3) Force every candidate for election to register their campaign-donations webpage and abide by the same weird rules that apply to donations by text message.

(4) Comcast could even require a “processing fee,” becoming the Ticketmaster of campaign contributions.

(5) Comcast could reserve the right to approve of every campaign online and every mass email to a political party’s or advocacy group’s list (as they do with text message short codes).

(6) If you create a small online business and hit it big, threaten to block your business unless you share 1/3 or more of all your revenues with them (apps on the iPhone app stores often are forced to give up a 1/3 or more; so are cable channels on cable TV).

(7) Block all peer to peer technologies, even those used for software developers to share software, distribute patches (world of warcraft), distribute open source software (Linux). In fact, Comcast has shown it would love to do this.

(8) Block Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Moveon.org (and its emails), because of an “exclusive” deal with other blogs. Or alternatively, block FoxNews.com because of a deal with NBC and MSNBC.

(9) Monitor everything you do online and sell it to advertisers, something else that some phone and cable have done, with the help of a shady spyware company.

(10) Lie to you about what they’re blocking and what they’re monitoring. Hell, the FCC wouldn’t have any authority to make them honest. The FCC couldn’t punish them.

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One in eight Americans are poised to drop or curtail their cable, satellite, or telco-TV packages in the coming year because the bill has gotten too expensive, according to a new study.

With an average cable bill now $71 a month and rising an average five percent a year, middle class consumers are being priced out of pay television according to the Yankee Group.  The Boston research firm conducted the study of cable, satellite and telephone-company IPTV services and surveyed 6,000 consumers from across the country.

“At the most basic level, the decision to cut off pay TV services is an economic one,” says Vince Vittore, principal analyst and co-author of the report. “As programmers continue to demand ever higher fees, which inevitably get passed on to consumers, we believe more consumers will be forced to consider coax-cutting.”

Coming on the heels of a steady erosion away from traditional telephone landline service which has threatened the fortunes of major phone companies, the implications of millions of consumers coax-cutting are not lost on cable operators or phone companies getting into the IPTV business.

Back to the Future: Older Americans Going Back to Rabbit Ears When Confronted With Today’s Cable Prices

Retro TV is a network that piggybacks on digital television sub-channels in many cities across the country. The network airs classic television shows popular with older audiences.

Those dropping service often take diverging paths for their future entertainment in a cable-free household.  Among older consumers, especially those on fixed incomes, it is back to the future with over the air television and a pair of rabbit ears or rooftop antenna designed to receive digital television broadcasts.

Among these consumers, the most common reason for canceling service is cost.  Many signed up for cable in the 1970s and 1980s for better picture quality, and with the right rooftop antenna, last year’s conversion to digital television solved that problem for over the air viewers.  Post-cable, many are pleasantly surprised to discover new channels piggybacking on traditional stations, several offering classic TV shows from decades past that are familiar and welcome in older Americans’ homes.  Even better — no confusing equipment to deal with.

Jesus Chea, 59, of Queens, told the NY Post he ditched his Time Warner subscription “because I’m on a fixed income and I believe it’s not worth the money.”

To get around the $136 monthly bill, the retiree, who lives with his wife and two grown sons, had antennas installed on both of his TVs — at a cost of $298 — taking advantage of last summer’s national conversion from analog to digital broadcasts.

“Antenna is great,” he says, “because they don’t charge you for rent on digital boxes and they don’t charge you for the remote control. When you add up all those extra fees and so many extra [cable] charges, even if it’s three or four extra dollars, they all add up.”

For many others, the arrival of Redbox video rental kiosks in area grocers has replaced the HBO subscription, and has proven to be a worthwhile supplement to the coax-cutter who drops cable service altogether.

The savings from cord cutting can be dramatic.  Some have saved upwards of $60 a month — $720 a year just by dropping the cable-TV part of their package.  Those kinds of savings have become important when wages are frozen or in decline, jobs are hard to find, and everything else is still going up in cost.

The cable industry has never imagined a country where consumers have quit cable (or satellite) and gone “cold turkey,” especially when upwards of 90 percent of Americans pay for some type of entertainment — pay television, movie rentals, or broadband video.

But as the Yankee Group discovered, Americans are simply tapped out.

Your Father’s Cable TV: Why Would Anyone Under 30 Subscribe?

For younger Americans, the addiction to cable or pay television was something that afflicted their parents.  They never had a problem dropping service from a cable company with whom they never did business.  The teens and twenty-somethings have spent most of their video dollar on broadband and DVD’s for much of their viewing, not cable.

Younger cable subscribers are most at risk for coax cutting, rationalizing they can watch most of their favorite shows online through services like Netflix, Hulu, or websites run by the major American networks.  Others download content (legally or otherwise), rent or buy DVD’s, or subscribe to services like Netflix which combine video streaming with DVD rentals-by-mail.

Many of these viewers also own devices that can bring web-based viewing right to their 50-inch television sets, using set top boxes or video game consoles with web connections.

“Admittedly, this is a small phenomenon now, but a number or recent transactions and new items point to a shift in consumer thinking,” said Vittore.

With the increasing ubiquity of Internet-capable devices, the challenge to traditional coax-based cable TV has never been greater.

“Just like with telephone land lines, it’s going to become hard to sell pay TV to anyone under 30,” Vittore said.

Provider Revenge: You Won’t Get Away That Easy!

With billions of dollars at stake, providers and content producers are intent on not allowing a repeat of what happened to the newspaper industry to afflict their business plans.  Giving it all away for free is not their idea of a sustainable business model.  Keeping tight control over content and its distribution is their ticket to maintaining profits.

Many Olympic events were not aired on NBC television, instead moved to NBC Universal-owned cable networks.

Older Americans who’ve gone back to over the air television are least susceptible to provider revenge, but content is still king and the cable industry will own an increasing percentage of it if the NBC-Comcast merger is approved.  While the two companies are currently promising not to dispense with free over the air broadcasting, an increasing amount of content could be diverted to pay television channels like cable sports networks, movie networks, and general interest basic cable channels.  Broadcasters themselves are now hungry for the same dual-revenue stream their cable competitors already enjoy – advertising income and subscription fees.

Most of the coming wars over pay entertainment are expected to be fought on the broadband battlefield.  For younger Americans relying on Hulu and other video streaming services, subscription fees are coming.  Hulu promises to keep some free viewing options open, but additional access to back episodes or certain series are likely to be restricted only to those who agree to pay an anticipated $9.95 per month.  The cable industry’s own TV Everywhere streaming services offers a clearer dividing line — its available only for those who maintain their pay television package.

Broadband providers, often the same companies that stand to lose from the retreat from television subscriptions, are considering making up the difference with limits on broadband service to make sure consumers can’t watch too much online, or charging consumption fees for heavy online viewers to make up their losses on the TV side.

The long-standing business relationship between content producers and distributors, such as those between Hollywood studios and cable companies, have led to a united front against would-be competitors.  For consumers seeking access to the latest Hollywood movies through low cost rental services or online video, expect to wait longer.  The window of time between a movie release in the theaters and when it becomes available for rental through Redbox or Netflix is growing longer to protect video-on-demand revenues for the cable industry and DVD sales for Hollywood.

Some consumers don’t mind the wait, but are still regularly reminded what they can miss when they don’t agree to a monthly pay television bill.

Jeremy Levinn, a 27-year-old personal trainer from Manhattan, told the Post he jumped the cable ship last year, but Time Warner Cable reminded him whose still boss during the Olympics, when numerous events were available only on Universal-owned cable channels including USA, CNBC and MSNBC and not broadcast over the air.

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CNN aired this review of the next generation of television sets capable of connecting with your broadband service to receive television shows and movies over the Internet.  (4 minutes)

New Apple iPad 3G owners launched a small controversy over the weekend about their discovery that certain video streaming services are showing lower resolution video (or no video at all) when using Apple’s new iPad 3G over AT&T’s wireless 3G network.

A range of sites pounced on the news.  It’s not easy to sort through who broke the story first, but by the end of the weekend, it developed a small life of its own.

iLounge was among the first to note serious video quality degradation when using the iPad over a cellular network, while it worked just fine over Wi-Fi:

…some video delivery applications act differently over the 3G network than they do on Wi-Fi. The iPad’s built-in YouTube application strips both standard and HD videos to a dramatically lower resolution over the cellular data connection, something that iTunes Store video previews notably do not do, instead staying at a higher quality and consuming a greater amount of data. Other third-party applications, such as the ABC Player, refuse to work at all over the cellular connection, producing a notification pop-up that states, “Please connect to a Wi-Fi network to use this application. Cellular networks are not supported at this time.”

YouTube streamed over AT&T's 3G Network on an iPad defaults to very low resolution. (Image: iLounge)

Electronista also jumped on the story, at first speculating AT&T may have had a hand on the speed throttling noting Sling Media ran into a similar blockade with AT&T before the wireless company relented and the software became available from the App Store.  PC Magazine quoted from the Electronista story (before Electronista’s editors modified their original piece) to build on the story.

By the end of the weekend, Electronista pulled back on some of their language in their original report and included a cryptic denial from AT&T, which claimed it was “a question for Apple.”

Stories of reported throttling and content walls will not take long to reach the public policy debate over Net Neutrality.  Is this an example of AT&T throttling Apple iPad customers and blocking them from accessing web content?

The answer, based on current evidence, is probably not.

There are technical issues behind the scenes which play a larger role here, but let’s begin with the average consumer and how a 3G network impacts on their “user experience.”

When designing a device like the iPad, engineers have to factor in usability and the overall impression customers will have using the product with a wireless network.  For many original iPad owners reliant on a Wi-Fi connection, pages render quickly, videos play properly, and applications that require higher bandwidth generally work fine.  Unfortunately, for those who lined up outside of Apple stores looking for the 3G wireless mobile broadband version of the iPad, the same may not always be true using AT&T’s 3G network.

AT&T promotes its 3G network as fast and capable of handling most any web application, including video.  But even the best 3G experience from AT&T is often much slower than a wired or Wi-Fi connection.  Despite the PR from AT&T, its 3G network frustrates many customers, especially in areas where cell sites are jammed with traffic or signals aren’t great.  Apple made sure larger-sized, streamed multimedia content seemed to work equally well on wireless by using adaptive video quality that can sense the speed of a connection, and reduce the quality of a video in order to make it play properly.  The theory is that a consumer using a handheld device probably wouldn’t notice the quality reduction on a small screen and would appreciate quick, uninterrupted playback.  Without such technology, a high quality video file can take longer to send over AT&T’s 3G network than it will take you to watch it.  That triggers the annoying “buffering content” pauses you see on slower networks.

AT&T officials told inquiring media “it’s a question for Apple,” which seems to confirm the reduced video quality is a function of the video player trying to adapt to AT&T’s speed.

Even with this in mind, some accused AT&T of employing social engineering to get customers to instinctively rely on Wi-Fi connections for higher bandwidth applications, reducing the demand on AT&T’s 3G network.

There is no need for a conspiracy theory like that when the simple, naked truth is far easier to grasp — AT&T has inadequate capacity and needs to upgrade their wireless networks to handle more traffic and sustain the speeds customers expect from a 3G-capable network.  AT&T is not purposely throttling the speeds of iPad 3G owners — their insufficient capacity results in a de facto speed throttle for all of their customers.  Unfortunately for those outside of the United States, the implications of AT&T’s slower 3G network can impact them as well.  Jesse Hollington in Toronto noted:

Unfortunately, these limitations don’t seem to be triggered by AT&T’s network, but rather in the iPhone OS or apps themselves, and the restrictions (at least on the iPhone) exist in every country where the iPhone is sold. There’s a general feeling outside of the U.S. that Apple’s kowtowing to AT&T’s “requirements” is actually ruining the experience for the rest of the world.

For instance, I can perhaps understand why YouTube videos need to be downsampled on AT&T’s slow 3G network, which even at peak performance is only 1.8mbps in most places.  As I noted above, however, Rogers up here provides 7.2mbps just about everywhere and provides better 3G performance than I get on some Wi-Fi networks. Yet we have to live with the same 3G restrictions as AT&T users do because they’re built into the iPhone OS.

That prompts the question what limits would have been “built-in” had AT&T’s own 3G network consistently delivered 7.2Mbps performance across its service areas.

As for ABC, and certain other content producers that restrict iPad owners to Wi-Fi viewing, that turns out not to be clear cut either.  ABC’s video streaming evidently exceeds a speed threshold that triggers the player to tell the user to use a Wi-Fi connection instead.  Licensing restrictions may also prevent the content from playing across a 3G network.

One of the most common arguments Net Neutrality opponents use to argue Net Neutality’s “unintended negative consequences” comes from bans on such adaptive speed controls.  Providers claim that by prioritizing or favoring certain traffic, they can maximize a consumer’s online experience so that they can use high bandwidth applications, as long as an intelligent network shaped the delivery of that traffic.

So one might ask, because adaptive video quality lets people watch their favorite online videos over AT&T’s 3G network, wouldn’t a ban on speed throttles make it difficult or impossible to provide a customer with access to that video?  Isn’t Net Neutrality a bludgeon that kills intelligent traffic management tools?

There is no shortage of techie-speaking, industry-funded Net Neutrality opponents that argue it regularly.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Net Neutrality does not ban software that can sense the speed of your connection and request an appropriate web stream that will assure uninterrupted playback.  Even ancient RealPlayer technology can adaptively adjust streaming quality based on what your connection will support, if the content producer supports it.  Such technology directly benefits the consumer (who can also often shut it off), whereas the kinds of traffic shaping providers advocate really only benefits them.

That’s an important distinction.  Too often, the kinds of “intelligent networks” providers speak of are designed to protect providers from “costly upgrades” and opens up new revenue streams by manipulating or limiting traffic and then charging users and producers to be exempted from them (for the right price).

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Last Friday, Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps appeared on PBS’ Bill Moyers’ Journal.  He discussed the current state of America’s broadband industry, the implications of not having Net Neutrality protections, and how the Internet is transforming public debate and citizen-powered democracy across the country.  (4/23/2010 — 23 minutes)

BILL MOYERS: The industry wrote a letter to the commission and said that advocates of an open Net who are coming to the FCC and asking you to reclassify what you do as telecommunications want to steer the debate, and I’m quoting from the letter, “in a radical new way.” I mean, they’re calling you extremists and they’re calling you radical.

MICHAEL COPPS: Because I want to call telecommunications, “telecommunications” and go back to the openness that has characterized the net since it was first invented in the laboratories of the Department of Defense. That’s not extreme. That’s not radical. That’s called going back to basics. That’s called consumer protection 101.

BILL MOYERS: How threatened is the whole idea of an open Net?

MICHAEL COPPS: Oh, I think very. I think very. I think there are powerful players that are opposed to it. Are in a position to make their influence felt. None of these things are going to come easy. We’ve just been through the health insurance debate. We’ve got the financial debacle. None of this stuff gets solved without taking on taking on a fight. The government doesn’t work that way. You’ve studied this history, I’ve studied this history. It’s painful, it needs movements, it needs grassroots support, it needs the people.