Time Warner Cable executives told investors on a morning conference call the cable company has embarked on a gradual transition to an all-IP-based distribution platform which could eventually mean the end of today’s set top boxes and radically increase the amount of bandwidth available for its broadband and video networks.

“Whatever the merits of that from an engineering sense, all things IP are the standards that the world is building devices to,” said Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt. “So that’s the standard we’re going to end up migrating to until something better comes along.”

The transition will help Time Warner Cable support additional customer-owned equipment, including video game consoles, streaming online video boxes, and televisions with built-in support for cable-delivered channels.

“If you look at the cable in 1980s, there weren’t a lot of set-tops, and I think we’re going back to that over time,” Britt said.

Britt has repeatedly criticized set top box equipment as cumbersome, expensive, outdated, and disliked from the perspective of customers. He noted the only reason Time Warner uses the boxes is to support traditional televisions that cannot handle all of the services the cable company offers today, including video-on-demand and encrypted premium channels. Moving to a different technology platform can result in significant savings if cable operators adopt open standard devices and technology.

Later this year, Time Warner will also be launching a nationwide channel realignment, affecting virtually every subscriber around the country. The cable company is adopting a unified, genre-based, national channel lineup, putting popular cable networks on identical channel numbers in every city.

Time Warner’s reported results found the company losing an additional 169,000 video subscribers during the quarter, a new record loss for the cable operator. Despite that, the company still booked an 8% increase in profits, thanks to higher prices for service and increases in the number of broadband customers. Time Warner blamed the video subscriber drop on seasonal losses from departing college students and those heading to vacation properties, as well as the downturned economy.

But the nation’s second biggest cable operator reports it has several initiatives under way for subscribers which they feel will boost earnings and subscriber numbers:

• Over the last 60 days, Time Warner deployed a new set-top box guide throughout the eastern region. After the Olympics conclude, the company will introduce the new guide across the western half of the country. The new guide features a new color scheme and better graphics, and is supposed to make navigation and search easier to use;

• The company will introduce IP-based set top boxes and home gateway devices by next year. The newest gateway is a combination DVR, DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem, and a video transcoder that can convert QAM-based video to IP for devices including game consoles and new IP set top boxes. Time Warner’s newest DVR will include the capability of recording five shows at the same time while watching another and 1TB of storage.

Install it yourself.

• Time Warner Cable’s TV Everywhere service will expand to include video on demand and the possibility of watching certain networks while outside of the home. The current service only works when you watch over your home Wi-Fi network.

• The cable operator’s Internet Essentials offer, which includes a 5GB monthly usage cap, will move beyond Texas and reach everywhere the cable operator serves by the second half of next year. When a usage meter shows up on your My Services page on Time Warner Cable’s website, you will know this new, optional plan is on the way.

• Time Warner is revamping their website to let customers shop, order, and buy more services online.

• Self-install kits will become increasingly common for customers comfortable installing their own services. The Easy Connect packages are available in stores or by mail, and are free of charge with no installation fee.

• Service call windows will continue to be refined. In most cities, two hour windows are currently offered, but the company is now moving to one-hour windows in many markets. In some cities, 15-minute windows for the first appointment of each shift are now available to customers who don’t want to sit at home and wait all day for the cable guy. The company is now also including an estimate of how long it typically takes to complete the type of service call requested.

• Customers continue to gravitate towards faster broadband service plans. The company’s Turbo, Extreme and Ultimate tiers together garnered 157,000 new adds in the second quarter and now comprise over 21% of high-speed data customers, up from 17% a year ago and 9% three years ago.

Britt also took questions about the impact Google Fiber will have on Time Warner Cable’s operations in Kansas City.

“There’s a lot of effort going on around the country to see what we could do as a society with more bandwidth in kind of a laboratory sense,” Britt said. “I view the Google effort as that. […] And I think that’s good for our business. We have a wonderful infrastructure, we have bandwidth, we have a way to go much faster with DOCSIS 3.0 by adding [higher speeds] to the offering. And the more the people figure out how to use broadband, the better off we’re going to be. So I think this is a good thing, not a bad thing, that people are trying to figure out how to use this technology.”

AT&T loves corporate free speech rights, the same ones it is using to deny customers access to Google’s Play Movies service.

With wireless Net Neutrality rendered largely ineffective with the help of AT&T and Verizon Wireless’ extensive lobbying and legal threats, AT&T has leveraged its right to govern its own network by deciding to block its wireless customers from watching Google Play Store’s streaming movie service over its 3G and 4G networks. This block is enforced even though AT&T already throttles heavy “unlimited” users and charges others more for using more data.

Geek.com was the first to discover AT&T’s curious dislike of Google Play Movies, while leaving other streaming services like Netflix, HBO Go, YouTube, and others alone (for now):

Instead of The Anchorman […] I was greeted with an error message telling me that I was not allowed to stream this movie over the mobile network. Assuming it was just an error, I tried again and got the same message. After a few minutes of playing with settings, it became clear that I was not going to be able to watch this movie without WiFi.

Yes, it seems that AT&T has removed the ability to watch Google Play Movie files over their 3G and LTE networks. This only happens with Google Play Movies, and only on AT&T. […] Curiously enough, you can download or “pin” a Google Play Movie over 3G and LTE and the only warning you get is one from Google explaining that you might incur data costs.

AT&T and Verizon have both declared Net Neutrality violates their free speech rights as corporate citizens — rights further expanded with the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision.

When Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski sought to introduce mild Net Neutrality protections for the Internet, both companies threatened to sue (Verizon has a case pending) and conservative commentators launched into tirades about “an Obama takeover of the Internet.”

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Today the FCC approved a proposal by chairman Julius Genachowski to give the FCC power to prevent broadband providers from selectively blocking web traffic. And that’s just a ruse. Net Neutrality is not what this is really all about. This is about the feds wanting to control the Internet just as they control the public airwaves. They want to be able to determine who gets to say what, where, how often — they want to be able to determine what search services are providing what answers to your queries. It’s total government control of the Internet, and the regime has just awarded it to itself.

It’s another gleaming aspect of free speech, free market, private industry Obama has decided to take over as a Christmas present to himself and the Democrat National Committee and to Mr. Soros. He’s even beaten Hugo Chavez to the punch. Chavez is just talking about taking over the Internet in Venezuela; Obama has got it done.

Geek.com doesn’t think the Obama Administration is blocking Google Play over AT&T — AT&T is. They just cannot understand the reasoning why:

I can’t imagine any real world justification for this behavior. If you pay your carrier for an internet connection to your phone, should the provider really be allowed to control how you use that connection? What’s more is that this happened over AT&T’s high speed and mostly empty LTE network. I can easily create a wireless hotspot on this same phone and stream a video from the Nexus 7, using the exact same data connection to accomplish the exact same task. This move is confusing at best, and AT&T is going to quickly alienate customers eager to take advantage of their brand new LTE devices as they receive them.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Corporateland.flv[/flv]

Mark Fiore channels Disney-sentimentality schtick on a whole new level with his take on AT&T’s Pinocchio-CorporateLand dream come true: the right to be human. (1 minute)

Wildblue’s customer forum will not allow its readers to link to Stop the Cap!, because in the view of Wildblue’s forum moderators, we are “counter-productive.”

We suspect the company is uncomfortable about exposing customers to the fact Wildblue is selling “broadband” satellite service with a “fair usage policy” so strict many customers cannot actually use the service for more than basic web browsing and e-mail. Wildblue consistently ranks  near the very bottom of broadband service providers rated by Consumer Reports (only HughesNet is worse).

The good news is Wildblue still allows customers to use Google. Most will have no trouble finding us even when the company spends time and effort censoring a direct link.

Public Knowledge, a public interest, pro-consumer group, has filed a petition calling on the Federal Communications Commission to enforce conditions imposed on the Comcast/NBC-Universal merger dealing with Comcast’s usage caps policy.

The group wants the FCC to investigate the legality of Comcast’s decision to exempt its own online video service from the usage caps Comcast is reintroducing on its broadband customers:

In evaluating the merger, both the FCC and the Department of Justice recognized that a combined Comcast/NBC-Universal would have an enhanced motive to discriminate against unaffiliated online video services that might compete with Comcast’s pay-TV cable service.  Because Comcast controls their subscribers’ connection to the internet, and subscribers could use that very connection to access video services  not controlled by Comcast, Comcast has the ability to manipulate those internet connections in a way that would disadvantage video competitors.

Specifically, Public Knowledge accuses Comcast of violating FCC condition G.1.a.:

“Neither Comcast nor C-NBCU shall engage in unfair methods of competition or unfair or deceptive acts or practices, the purpose or effect of which is to hinder significantly or prevent any MVPD or OVD from providing Video Programming online to subscribers or customers.”

The group argues that unfairly applied usage caps impact Comcast’s online video competitors. Customers will choose the service that does not eat away at their monthly broadband usage allowance, making competitors operate on an unfair playing ground.

The group has raised questions about the industry’s movement towards Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and speed throttles and has repeatedly requested the FCC question how data allowance levels are developed, evaluated, and evolve over time.

Normally, telephone companies looking for a rate increase file a request themselves with state regulators to charge customers more for service. But in Georgia, AT&T, Comcast, and the state cable lobbying group are asking the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) to order two rural phone companies to raise rates because they are not “charging enough” for phone service, when compared with cable telephone services and AT&T.

The Ringgold Telephone Company (RTC) and Chickamauga Telephone Company both argue the action is anti-competitive.

“By forcing [both companies] to increase rates, these competitors are seeking to make wireless and cable companies more attractive to consumers,” says the Don’t Raise My Rate website.

The independent phone companies are vehemently against raising their rates, and executives at both companies are outraged AT&T and the state’s cable companies are literally trying to force the GPSC to order rate increases on residential and business customers.

“It’s totally unprecedented,” Phil Erli, executive vice president at RTC told the Times Free Press.  “It is ludicrous and illogical.”

The Georgia Public Service Commission will decide on Oct. 16 whether the rate increases are justified, following local public hearings Aug. 13.

AT&T, which is driving the campaign to force customers to pay higher rates, says they are pressing the case because both companies unfairly charge substantially lower rates than AT&T does in Georgia.

Peter F. Martin, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs in Georgia openly admits he wants both companies to charge essentially the same prices AT&T bills its customers in other areas of the state.

“The premise of my recommendation is that [the two phone companies] raise rates to roughly the same levels that are being charged by other local exchange carriers in surrounding areas,” Martin testified before the GPSC. “In other words, my recommendation is that [the two phone companies] increase their own end-user rates to market-based levels comparable to what other carriers are charging their subscribers.”

For customers of Chickamauga Telephone, that would amount to a 42% rate increase on residential customers, 100% on business customers. Customers of RTC would pay 20 percent more for residential service, 37% more for business service.

AT&T claims both companies, in deeply rural Georgia, are tapping into the state’s rural service fund and are receiving some of the largest state-mandated telecom subsidies, which are funded by all of Georgia’s phone companies and ratepayers. But both companies claim they have spent a large portion of those funds repairing damages to their rural networks incurred from a series of tornadoes which hit the area two years in a row.

The state cable lobbying group, the Cable Television Association of Georgia (CTAG) also has a dog in this fight. Comcast Cable, the dominant provider in Georgia, directly competes with both phone companies. They support AT&T’s demands that both phone companies hike their rates. It is not difficult to understand why:

Residential Service With Calling Features:

Business Service With Calling Features:

(EPB, a publicly-owned provider from nearby Chattanooga, Tenn., also offers service in some areas.)

Chickamauga Telephone executives argue Georgia’s telephone deregulation policies are heavily weighted in favor of huge phone and cable companies and leave independent, rural phone companies with no new revenue opportunities. Chickamauga argues AT&T and the cable industry are using legislatively imposed “unfunded mandates” to win favor and additional profits for themselves and their shareholders, with no resulting savings for Georgia ratepayers, especially in rural areas.

If AT&T and cable operators have their way, both independent phone companies “would be priced out of the competitive market,” and “would soon find [themselves] out of business.”

“If you lived down here and you had a phone with us and your rates went up, how would you respond?” asked Ted Austin, a spokesman for Chickamauga Telephone. “Nobody wants their bills to go up, especially when it’s not something that Chickamauga Telephone is asking for.”