THE Internet Overcharger

Cable One, one of the nation’s most notorious, usage-capped broadband providers, has left thousands of Columbus, Miss. subscribers without phone, Internet, and cable television service since 6pm Sunday night, unable to repair the problem until a part arrives at the local cable office.

The Dispatch reports a steady stream of people, unable to get answers from Cable One over the phone, have been showing up at the company’s local cable office from the time it opened for business this morning, all looking for answers.

Cable One General Manager David Lusby said he had no idea how many customers were affected by the outage or when the cable system would be back up and running. Those are not the answers customers want to hear, particularly for customers depending on Cable One for their local businesses. Local shops have been unable to process credit card transactions, cannot make or receive calls, and are relying on personal cell phones for basic connectivity with the outside world.

New Hope resident Walter Worthy is fed up with Cable One’s bad service, calling the company’s broadband service “spotty” for more than a month.  Worthy told the newspaper he would rather have AT&T’s DSL service if he could, but AT&T has shown no interest extending service in his neighborhood.

One ex-customer named Matt told the newspaper he finally dropped Cable One Internet service that cost $65 a month for the same reason.

Cable One maintains one of the most arcane Internet “Fair Use” policies in the country, with broadband usage limits that apply to both daily and monthly usage:

Another limit applies to monthly usage:

The combination of poor service and a confusing Internet Overcharging scheme resulted in the cable operator experiencing a loss in broadband customers, almost unprecedented for cable companies. Cable One said goodbye to 1,017 high-speed Internet and 9,610 basic video subscribers during the second quarter, according to its owner, The Washington Post.

Communities like Natchez, Miss. are responding by attempting to shorten its franchise renewal with the company, which typically runs 10 years.

Ward 3 Alderwoman Sarah Smith foresees the contract being renewed but isn’t certain she wants the city’s digital future tied to Cable One for the next decade.

“Technology is changing so fast, I just don’t see us having any contract for as long as 10 years,” Smith told the Natchez Democrat.

Smith notes local residents have regularly complained about Cable One’s service, and the city has considered the possibility of letting another operator take over in the area, but has found no takers.

“We’re not going to be on the top of the radar for every service to be here,” Smith said.

More importantly, it is unprecedented for another major cable provider to displace a current operator, no matter how poorly they provide service.

The newspaper industry’s version of an infomercial.

Does your local newspaper sell its journalistic credibility down the river with an annual “best of” contest asking readers to vote for their favorite companies the newspaper later uses to shamelessly pursue advertising deals for a “special supplement” announcing the results?

The Topeka Capital-Journal sure does, and they’ve transformed the seedy affair into an art form, complete with softball interviews for some of the winning companies.

Take AT&T, which somehow got voted Topeka’s best cell phone company. (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and TracFone also made their “list” — showing either the tiny number of cell phone competitors in Topeka or a desire not to leave anyone out.)

In a “special” to the Capital-Journal, ad sales guy “reporter” Phil Wilke managed to interview an AT&T spokesman… by e-mail. It was not a tough interview:

Pulitzer Prize material it is not.

Consumer Reports readers do not think as highly of AT&T, but then that magazine does not accept advertising from AT&T — Topeka’s newspaper does. (J.D. Power and Associates also put AT&T at the bottom in its own survey.)

I first got suspicious when Olive Garden, the Chef Boyardee of Italian restaurants, made the list for “best restaurant service,” “best Italian restaurant,” and [shudder] “most romantic restaurant.” There is either something very wrong in Topeka, or these results don’t mean a thing.

But they do mean a lot of advertising revenue for the Capital Journal, which can call every winner and implore them to take out a special ad “thanking readers” for placing trust in their establishment. Puff pieces like the AT&T interview found above do little  for the newspaper’s credibility and trust with readers, however.

Surprisingly there was no category for Topeka’s best news source, but we did finally locate one where a nomination for the Topeka newspaper was appropriate: “BEST PLACE TO PLAY SOFTBALL.”

Stuck with snail slow DSL, spotty Wi-Fi, or usage-capped 3G and need faster access? A new project from Connectify is now attracting funding from the Kickstarter project to deliver a new broadband connection combiner that can turn up to 10 different wireless and wired connections into one super-sized broadband pipe.

Connectify’s Dispatch software will manage connections ranging from dialup to Ethernet through a hotspot application that can be run on a desktop PC. The Philadelphia company has been pushing the project primarily to the speed obsessed, demonstrating outdoor connections to multiple open Wi-Fi networks, 3G and 4G mobile broadband that when combined deliver more than 80Mbps of download speed. But the software may also prove useful as a connections management tool that can seamlessly switch from free Wi-Fi when your connection becomes intolerably slow to a different pipe — 3G or 4G wireless broadband — all without missing a beat.

With two weeks left in the Kickstarter campaign, Connectify has raised just over $33,000 of the $50,000 goal. The company recently sweetened the deal early investors get, perhaps to attract an additional burst of funding. Those investing $50 or more will receive a lifetime license with unlimited software upgrades forever.

Some mobile carriers are experimenting with similar technology, mostly to move customers automatically off of their mobile networks to Wi-Fi, where available. Others are experimenting with technology that would allow simultaneous connections to Wi-Fi and 4G networks, moving different types of data across one or both simultaneously.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Connectify Dispatch.mp4[/flv]

Introducing Connectify Dispatch, which can turn multiple slow broadband connections into one fast one. (4 minutes)

Free Wi-Fi is always popular and Fort Wayne, Ind. is welcoming news that Frontier Communications intends to install and operate a downtown network of hotspots offering what local newspapers characterize as “free access.”

The area being outfitted with wireless Internet is bordered by Clay Street to the east, Broadway to the west, Headwaters Park to the north and Lewis Street to the south, according to city officials.

Frontier says it plans to offer 512kbps access on most hotspots, 1Mbps service on others, with a limited number operating at still higher speeds where fiber optics are available.

But Frontier’s Wi-Fi networks in other cities have some important considerations for those expecting wide open, free access.

Free has its limits.

In Rochester, N.Y., free access hotspots are extremely limited in number and offer very slow speeds (often close to dial-up) to entice users to upgrade to a premium Wi-Fi speed plan starting at $9.99 per month for current Frontier customers, $30 a month for non-customers. The vast majority of hotspots only offer five minutes a week of free access.

In Terre Haute, free access is available to only the first 100 users connected to the network. All others are required to pay. Those who do choose to subscribe can only use one device at a time.

The scheduled rollout of Frontier Wi-Fi in Fort Wayne has yet to be announced.

Warren County

CenturyLink left Warren County, Ohio’s 911 system out of service for more than 15 hours after a 70 mph derecho blew across the region in late June, eventually forwarding emergency calls to confused operators at a 911 center in another county at the other end of the state. When local officials asked CenturyLink to attend a meeting to explain what happened, they never showed up.

Now Commissioner Dave Young wants CenturyLink kicked out of the county, turning 911 services over to a provider that actually answers their phone.

“I want to switch sooner rather than later,” Young said. “The way this went down and the response we got from CenturyLink and now three weeks later we still don’t know the reason? We call our liaison and her solution to the 911 system being down is keep calling the 800 number. There’s something wrong there.”

Young was particularly peeved that CenturyLink did not send a representative to a meeting investigating the lengthy outage.

“So essentially they blew us off this morning,” Young said.

Geauga County

During the outage, callers initially heard nothing after dialing 911. Sometime later, someone at CenturyLink reprogrammed the equipment to forward calls from the Warren County 911 system in southwest Ohio to distant Geauga County’s 911 center in northeast Ohio near Cleveland, surprising operators.

Initial reports blame inexperienced technicians, human error, and understaffing at CenturyLink. Young wants the contract transferred to another provider with a better track record.

CenturyLink’s errors left Warren County without 911 service from 5:15pm until 8:30am the following day. County officials later learned the technician assigned to work on the problem did not actually commence repairs until 3:30am — more than 10 hours after the outage was first reported.

“CenturyLink is confident we can come to a resolution on this issue.” said Joanette Romero, spokeswoman for the company.