Time Warner Cable has expanded its national and regional sports lineup on its TV Everywhere online streaming app TWC TV in at least three large cities, with more to follow.

Among the national networks most customers can now access: ESPN, ESPN 2, MLB Network, NBA TV, NHL Network, TBS and TNT.

Also added to the lineup: Fox Sports regional cable networks.

• New York City (except for Hudson Valley) – ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, YES, SNY, MSG, MSG+, MLB Network, NBA TV, NHL Network
• Dallas – ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, Fox Sports Southwest, MLB Network, NBA TV, NHL Network
• Charlotte – ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, Fox Sports Carolinas, SportSouth, MLB Network, NBA TV, NHL Network

The new channels are available on the iPad, iPhone, Android 4.0 smartphones and tablets, and TWCTV.com to cable customers with at least an expanded basic subscription and the company’s broadband service.

AT&T's bill padding.

No other single corporation has spent more trying to influence legislators in the state of California than AT&T.

That conclusion was reached as part of a report by the Los Angeles Times documenting AT&T’s millions in political donations and an army of lobbyists that effectively kill just about every measure the company opposes.

Some of the biggest checks change hands at the two-day Speaker’s Cup, the Godzilla fundraising event for California state Democrats.

During last year’s outing, those who attended were handed goody bags worthy of a Hollywood event.  Free products included a brand new iPad that came with a thank you note co-signed by Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles) and AT&T’s top lobbyist — its chief of government relations.

This year’s event, to be held May 5-6, is priced at an average of $12,000 per ticket, but many legislators get free passes for a weekend that includes unlimited golf, wine, gourmet food, body wraps and hot-stone massages.

Come for the golf, but stay for the lobbyist-legislator hobnobbing.

At past events, AT&T’s state president bounded across the green shaking hands with every legislator he could find, and those he couldn’t just had to wait by the mailbox.  Every California legislator is the recipient of at least $1,000 in the form of a campaign contribution.  More important state lawmakers earn much more from the phone company, often tens of thousands of dollars.

But AT&T’s “concierge service” for lawmakers doesn’t stop with golf outings and campaign checks.

AT&T spends more than $14,000 a day on political advocacy in California, and when a lawmaker can’t get tickets to a premiere event, concert, or playoff game, one phone call to an AT&T lobbyist is usually all it takes to remedy the situation.  Hundreds of free tickets were dispensed, according to the Times, for everything from basketball playoffs to Disney on Ice.

Lawmakers deny AT&T’s iPads, cash, and tickets have any influence over their decisionmaking, a view scoffed at by watchdog group Common Cause.

“What these things do is create a sense of gratitude and indebtedness,” Derek Cressman, western states director for Common Cause said. “It’s basic human nature: If someone does something nice for you, you want to do something nice for them.”

The number of favors returned by lawmakers for AT&T’s benefit:

• Bill to force phone companies to be more transparent about cellphone fees: died in legislature;
• Bill to end monthly charges for unlisted numbers: died in legislature, and AT&T and since raised the rates on the service;
• State controls on landline pricing: eliminated
• A bill to help consumers stop unwanted delivery of the Yellow Pages: defeated
• A measure to deregulate cable TV franchising and move it to the state level for the benefit of AT&T U-verse: passed

“Every day I look at a case and I think, well, if they [AT&T] don’t care, we have a good chance,” Denise Mann from the Division of Ratepayer Advocates told the newspaper. But if AT&T’s corporate offices do care, she added, “all we can do is appeal to conscience, reason and the public interest.”

Wolk

That often isn’t enough.  Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) learned that first-hand when she attempted to introduce a measure to curb phone cramming — placing unauthorized charges on consumer phone bills.  The negotiated measure was well on the way to passage in the state legislature until AT&T’s chief operative showed up.

Wolk was amazed to find AT&T’s Bill Devine taking a front row seat in the committee room reserved for legislators and staff to listen to her revised bill.  When she finished, Devine headed for the microphone and delivered his own version of how the bill should be written.

Wolk was out of her league.  A common-sense measure that had received early support from legislators suddenly was in deep trouble as fellow legislators quickly fell in behind Devine’s reinterpretation of the bill.  The bill was put on hold and died a quiet death one week later.

Nobody spends more than AT&T on influencing public officials in the state government.  In the past 13 years, the phone company has spent more than $47 million on lobbying, more than twice the second biggest corporate spender — Edison International — has spent in the state.  That doesn’t include the $1 million+ in political campaign contributions doled out each year.

AT&T takes care of the political advocates who take care of them, as well.

The Times reports that ex-lawmakers, regulators, and staff members of the legislature have all found work in lobbying and public relations firms that include AT&T as a client.

Even non-profit groups who advocate AT&T’s positions on telecommunications issues stand to win.  The company cuts checks to groups like United Way and the Boys and Girls Club who in turn write letters to legislators requesting they support AT&T’s agenda.

At a time when cable operators are more reluctant than ever to overbuild into another operator’s territory, something very strange is going on in central North Carolina.

Time Warner Cable is moving into the neighborhood — one already receiving service from a community-owned cable operator.  That would be like Time Warner moving into one of Comcast’s service areas.  For some reason, those large cable companies completely avoid competing head-to-head, but where community-owned provider MI-Connection has managed to sign up around 15,000 customers for service, Time Warner Cable has also arrived.

As a result, customers north of Charlotte, in communities around Davidson and Mooresville, are getting some amazing prices for cable television, phone, and broadband.  Time Warner will even deliver an offer right to your front door.

Susan Wagner in Mooresville got her deal when she threatened to cancel Time Warner Cable and return to MI-Connection.

“(Time Warner) gave everyone a really good offer when they first came in and then drove up the price after a while,” Wagner told the Charlotte Observer.

When Wagner called to cancel, Time Warner sent an employee to her door offering to slash her cable bill by $50 a month, enough to keep her business.

Other residents in nearby Cornelius are also getting prices substantially lower than residents in cities like Charlotte, where many residents have one choice for cable: Time Warner.  Sam, a Stop the Cap! reader in the Morrison Plantation neighborhood, noted they skipped the last few rate increases from the cable company.

“You just call and tell them the rate is too high and as soon as they find out you have MI-Connection as an alternative, they lower the price,” he said. “My niece in Charlotte can’t get the same deal even when we gave her the details — it’s only good in areas where MI-Connection operates.”

That leaves Charlotte residents paying $35-50 more a month than savvy customers further north can have for the asking.

“It sounds like predatory pricing to me when the company offers a special low price that people like my niece are probably subsidizing on their higher bill,” Sam suspects.

The Observer reports Time Warner is also laying cable in other neighborhoods, such as Heritage Green, where the cable company is soliciting business from MI-Connection subscribers door-to-door.

MI-Connection’s CEO, David Auger, formerly from Time Warner Cable himself, claims he’s unconcerned about Time Warner’s aggressive overbuild of his service area.

But the state’s largest commercial cable company has been signing up some of MI-Connection’s current customer base and successfully holding its existing customers in place with significant discounts on service.  Since last July, MI-Connection signed up 667 new customers, but also lost 577 others, most likely to Time Warner Cable.

MI-Connection was launched from the ashes of a bankrupt Adelphia Cable system acquired by the communities of Mooresville and Davidson.  After investing in a needed system upgrade, the community owned provider relaunched service nearly identical technically to other cable systems.  Unlike Wilson and Salisbury, where new fiber-to-the-home systems were built, MI-Connection offers a more traditional cable package.

That makes competition with Time Warner Cable more difficult, but the community provider is trying.  Time Warner Cable’s regular pricing in the area runs $68.49 a month for 85 basic channels.  MI-Connection sells 86 channels for $61.99.  But when customers call Time Warner to complain about their higher prices, the cable operator dramatically lowers them to keep the customer’s business.

“The regular price only matters until you call and complain about it,” says Sam.

There have been complaints, but many of them are less about the cable bill and more about politics.  MI-Connection has not come cheap either town, which had to cover some of the costs of a needed system upgrade and service installation, estimated to run about $1,000 for every new customer signed.

Last fall, mayoral challenger Vince Winegardner made local government involvement in broadband a political issue, saying the purchase of the cable system was a mistake.  He lost his bid, but the system’s money needs remain a frequent topic of discussion in all of the communities involved in MI-Connection, and earlier this year the company company asked for $1.1 million from Davidson and Mooresville to ride out the rest of the fiscal year.

Time Warner’s recent interest in invading a fellow cable operator’s service area and slashing prices for those customers has raised the question whether their overbuild is about competition or predatory pricing to drive MI-Connection out of business.

Wagner doesn’t seem to mind either way, telling the Observer it is a “win-win” for her, scoring a lower cable bill with Time Warner.

But Sam isn’t so sure the savings will last.

“It seems pretty clear to me that Time Warner isn’t hurrying to compete with Comcast or Charter — just MI-Connection and that makes me suspicious,” Sam says. “After spending all that money to ban community broadband in the state, they now seem to be trying to drive out of business the handful of companies that were exempted.”

“My niece is probably paying for this right now on her cable bill too, and once MI-Connection is out of the way, those prices will shoot right back up,” Sam concludes.

Just over a week after Verizon Communications announced it would stop selling DSL service to customers without landline voice telephone service, the company today confirmed it plans to stop selling DSL to customers who live in an area also served by the company’s fiber optic FiOS network.

New customers looking for broadband from Verizon will have to sign up for FiOS to get it.

The announcement came as part of a quarterly conference call with Wall Street investors.

Some consumers looking for the cheapest Internet access packages have gotten them from the phone company, often years earlier, and are grandfathered in at those prices.  Verizon says it does not intend to disconnect existing DSL customers, who can keep the service indefinitely, but will not sell the slower broadband service to new or moving customers.

No exact timing for the new policy to take effect was given.

Verizon’s broadband success story has been with its fiber optic network, which continues to add customers.  The same cannot be said of their DSL service, which continues to lose business to Verizon’s cable competitors, especially in areas where FiOS remains unavailable.  FiOS was designed to protect Verizon’s landline business and it seems to be doing exactly that.  At least 63% of Verizon’s landline-associated revenue now comes from its fiber optic service.

Verizon’s executives have made it clear change is coming to the traditional landline business.  The company has not said what it intends to do with DSL customers in non-FiOS areas but did announce they would decommission pay telephones and discontinue long distance calling cards in the future.

Some of AT&T’s prepaid GoPhone customers are howling over the company’s “new and improved” data packages that now require customers to purchase a qualified voice package if they also want affordable wireless data.

AT&T’s press release:

AT&T today announced the following new data packages with double the data or more for the same price for GoPhone customers, available April 22.

• 1GB for $25
• 200MB for $15
• 50MB for $5

All data packages are available on the $50 Unlimited Talk & Text nationwide plan for GoPhone smartphones and the $25 Unlimited Text with 250 minutes nationwide GoPhone plan.

At first glance the new data plans seem to offer double the data allowance of AT&T’s older plans, which were available to any prepaid customer who wanted to avoid AT&T’s default data rate: 1 cent per 5KB.  While that amount seems tiny, in fact it’s not.  A gigabyte of usage without a data plan costs over $2,000. That is quite an incentive to enroll in one of AT&T’s data packages.

Only now AT&T’s most value-conscious customers can’t.

AT&T’s “new and improved” prepaid plans now require customers to first enroll in a $25 or $50 voice plan before they are allowed to purchase a data package.  That leaves AT&T’s “pay as you go” customers out in the cold.

A customer used to spending $15 a month on a data package with a 10c per voice minute plan with no daily access fee will now pay at least $50.  The required 250 minute voice plan with unlimited text runs $25 a month.  The data package costs an additional $25.

Rory Smith called that “rubbish.”

“Effectively this makes the service completely useless as I only need a small amount of data and rarely use my phone for voice calls or SMS messages,” Smith wrote.

“By doing this they are requiring you to enter a talk plan and pay for minutes you will never use, all just to force consumers into paying more,” another customer remarked. “It really seems like AT&T is trying to squeeze every penny they can out of their prepaid plans.”

AT&T's new prepaid pricing plans

Some analysts worry AT&T’s quest for data profits are pricing them out of the prepaid data-only market.

Current Analysis analyst Deepa Karthikeyan wrote in a report that AT&T will likely prompt customers to start shopping around and they are likely to encounter daily plan options that deliver somewhat better pricing at rival carriers.  Daily plan customers typically want the cheapest plan possible so they can pay a-la-carte for the specific features that interest them.  AT&T’s move forces customers to pay a $25 entry fee just to qualify for a data plan, which in some cases is the only reason the customer has the phone.

Some of AT&T’s competitors with comparable plans:

• T-Mobile: $3/day Pay As You Go – First 200MB at 3G speed -or- $30 up to 5GB at 4G speed plus 100 minutes, unlimited texting
• Virgin Mobile: $35 up to 2.5GB data, 300 minutes, unlimited texting
• Verizon: $50 unlimited talk, texting, minutes
• Straight Talk: $45 unlimited talk, texting, 2GB data with roaming on small GSM carriers
• Red Pocket: $60 unlimited talk, texting, 2GB data and 200 international minutes
• H20 Wireless: $60 unlimited talk, texting, 1GB data and $10 international calling