This monopole cell tower antenna just showed up one day in the backyard of this Kirkland, PQ resident.

Rogers Communications installed a 49-foot monopole cellular antenna in the backyard of a Kirkland, Que. resident earlier this year, but the only signals being transmitted are discussions over its fate at town hall.

Residents were furious when a neighbor leased out a portion of a residential backyard to Rogers, who claims the small cube antenna mounted on the pole will improve cell reception in the immediate area. Ever since Stop the Cap! first covered this story earlier this year, local officials have been flummoxed about what they can do about the antenna, which is currently non-operational.

“For now (there is) no resolution, but talks are progressing,” Kirkland’s director general Joe Sanalitro told The West Island Gazette. “We are demanding it come down.”

Rogers and Kirkland officials have been meeting about the antenna, which has generated considerable interest and complaints over whether the company used a zoning loophole to sneak the antenna into the neighborhood.

If allowed to stand, residents fear Rogers and other cell companies could offer cash incentives to other homeowners to erect similar towers, increasing visual pollution.

Industry Canada rules state towers less than 15 meters are excluded from municipal notification rules and do not require permits to install.  Rogers was evidently aware of this rule — its Kirkland antenna tops out at 14.5 meters, just shy of the height limit.

An innovative plan to rent New Yorkers a dime-sized over-the-air antenna housed in a Brooklyn data center to receive and stream local broadcasters could be the end of broadcast TV as we know it, at least if you believe the claims being made by network executives in their high-powered lawsuit.

Aereo, which charges $12 a month to an invitation-only customer base, is the target of serious legal action brought by the major broadcast networks and local TV stations that believe Aereo’s disruptive business model could allow cable operators to avoid paying retransmission consent fees for free, over the air television signals.

Aereo only streams local broadcasters in the New York metropolitan area to residents within viewing range of the signals. The company argues it operates legally because of a time-tested, sound legal principle: the Communications Act of 1934, which offers broadcasters a license to use the public airwaves in return for operating in the public interest. Aereo only rents its tiny antennas to one customer at a time, and provides them with streamed video received by that antenna. The company charges a nominal monthly fee to cover the costs of operating its data center and to cover streaming expenses.

The monthly subscription fee grants viewers access to watch one channel while recording another on a cloud-based DVR “storage locker.” Viewers can watch the signals on just about any device, as long as they are located within the New York metropolitan area. Travelers and those who live outside of the area cannot watch programming or subscribe to the service.

The threat to the nation’s pay television operators and broadcasters is obvious. Over the air television broadcasters increasingly rely on so-called “retransmission consent payments” collected from pay television operators in return for permission to place their signals on the cable, telco, or satellite TV dial. Broadcasters bank on that growing revenue. Pay television providers grudgingly agree to the payments and promptly pass them on to already rate-increase-weary subscribers, who want a way out of paying for hundreds of channels they don’t care to watch.

Aereo's over the air antenna is about the size of a dime.

Aereo breaks the business models of both broadcasters and the cable industry. Cord cutters can get reliable and cheap reception of over-the-air stations without dealing with cumbersome in-home antennas (or paying local cable companies for HD-quality local stations and a DVR box). Goodbye $70 cable-TV bill. Broadcasters also lose every time the local pay television company drops a subscriber. Aereo does not pay retransmission consent fees, nor do their subscribers.

But Aereo is not all bad news for pay television providers. If Aereo can survive the legal onslaught from broadcast interests, nothing stops local cable companies from licensing Aereo technology (or constructing their own system) that would bypass retransmission consent fees as well. That could save cable operators millions.

Ridiculous? Not according to Matt Bond, an executive vice-president at Comcast/NBC who told a New York federal court the risk is real.

“It makes little economic sense for cable systems and satellite broadcasters to continue to pay for NBCU content on a per-subscriber basis when, with a relatively modest investment, they can simply modify their operations to mirror Aereo’s ‘individual antenna’ scheme and retransmit, for free, over-the-air local broadcast programming,” Bond said. “I know for a fact that cable companies have already considered such a model.”

Diller

Broadcasters revile Aereo’s disruptive innovation.  Bond called the service “piracy.” Other network executives say it steals their content and resells it at a profit. Some are even predicting the destruction of broadcast television as we know it if Aereo is found to be legal. Virtually every network is on board for the lawsuit, which seeks an immediate injunction that would shut the service down.

Barry Diller, a veteran broadcast executive, has invested in Aereo and calls the broadcasters’ fears rubbish.

“It’s not the beginning of the destruction of anybody,” Diller told New York Magazine. “TV wasn’t the destruction of the movie business. Television wasn’t the destruction of radio. Cable wasn’t the destruction of broadcast networks. What happens is new alternatives come, and they live alongside whatever existed.”

“You have an antenna that has your name on it, figuratively … and it’s one-to-one. It is not a network,” Diller told members of the Senate Commerce Committee during a recent hearing. “It is a platform for you to simply receive, over the Internet, broadcast signals that are free and to record them and use them on any device that you like.”

Aereo is not a pioneer in the video streaming of over the air signals. iCraveTV launched in 1999 streaming broadcast stations from Buffalo, N.Y. and Ontario, Canada from its home base in Toronto. Broadcasters filed suit and quickly shut the service down. ivi-TV tried a similar venture in 2011 and was also shut down. Even companies experimenting with IPTV technology have run into trouble with some networks that feel threatened by a possible precedent that could be mistakenly established, starting a flood of similar services.

To date, only services that agree to broadcaster sanctions (Slingbox) or who have retransmission consent contracts with providers (such as the cable industry’s TV Everywhere project) have survived, but all have limitations imposed on their functionality that reduce their usefulness to consumers.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Aereo TV Demo May 2012.flv[/flv]

Aereo TV was demonstrated by the company CEO Chet Kanojia at the New York Tech Meetup May 9.  (21 minutes)

Bell Mobility and its parent company, Bell Canada are facing a $100 million class action lawsuit that claims expiration dates on Bell’s prepaid wireless service are illegal.

Ontario’s Consumer Protection Act bans expiration dates from gift cards.  The Toronto law firm of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP alleges that prepaid wireless services, often topped up with prepaid cards, should be treated just like gift cards and not subject to expiration dates that wipe out available balances.

The suit was filed on behalf of Celia Sankar of Elliot Lake, Ont.

Sankar is founder of the DiversityCanada Foundation, a non-profit group that fights for diversity, inclusion and harmony among Canadians. Sankar had her Bell Mobility prepaid balances wiped out on two occasions because she did not use her available balance or “top-up” her account with additional funds within the time window specified by Bell.

A $15 Bell Mobility prepaid top-up card expires in 30 days. A $25 top-up card expires in 60 days. Customers can buy a $100 card and avoid losing their balance for one year. Accounts with a $0 balance for 120 days will be terminated.

“Because the prepaid wireless service is the least expensive way to have a phone, and does not require a credit card or a bank account, it is often the only option for youth, new immigrants, workers on minimum wage, the unemployed, people on disability and seniors on fixed incomes,” Sankar said. “These are the people who can least afford to have their funds forfeited or to have their mobile services cut off.”

Bell declared the suit was without merit and intends to fight it.

If the case is certified as a class-action suit, Bell faces the prospect of defending itself against all Ontario residents who have used Bell’s prepaid services since May 4, 2010. Those brands include Bell Mobility, Solo Mobile, and Virgin Mobile Canada.

Time Warner Cable's old branding for broadband

Time Warner Cable is nearing the end of a licensing deal that has allowed the company to use a familiar Warner Bros. animated character to promote their broadband service.

The company has spent at least a year transitioning customers away from the Road Runner brand name, now simply referring to their broadband product as “Internet” or, in some markets, “HSI” — High Speed Internet.

The “brand refresh” comes as Time Warner tries to associate all of its products and services around its traditional “eye-ear” logo, according to company spokeswoman Jeannette Castaneda.

Licensing the Road Runner character as the broadband service’s mascot has also been expensive, and the continued need to use the character to educate consumers about the speed benefits of cable broadband over DSL has diminished in importance.

The new look

The transition away from the Road Runner brand has been ongoing since last summer, but Broadband Reports notes numerous markets will see the brand and logo eliminated completely effective May 19th.  The company is also using the occasion to adjust pricing and tiers of its broadband service.  Hardest hit will be standalone broadband-only customers, who will now pay $53.95 a month for Time Warner’s standard 10/1Mbps Internet service. New customers will also pay a modem rental fee of $2.50 a month. Standalone Turbo (20/2Mbps) customers will pay $73.95 for their Internet service.

Time Warner Cable’s a-la-carte pricing for broadband is designed to make their bundled service offerings more attractive in comparison. The company will sell you Internet-only service for $73.95, or sell you a triple play package of phone, Internet, and television service for just $16.04 per month more on a 12-month promotion.

Broadband Reports‘ source lists pricing for one unspecified market:

• $53.95 for Time Warner’s 10/1Mbps Standard Internet
• $20.00 additional for 20/2 Turbo
• $30.00 additional for 30/5 Extreme
• $50.00 additional for 50/5 Ultimate
• $29.95 for 1/1 Lite (Usually a retention only offer)
• $42.95 for 3/1 Basic

Customers can avoid paying regular pricing by bundling multiple services together, getting a customer retention deal when threatening to cancel service, or bouncing between a six-month new customer promotion available from Earthlink over Time Warner Cable and the cable company’s own broadband promotional offer, good for 12 months. Both cost $29.99 a month in many markets.

Time Warner Cable's marketing machine pushes customers towards multi-service bundles. New customers pay even less.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Road Runner 2002 Ad.mp4[/flv]

A Time Warner Cable Road Runner advertisement from 2002.  (1 minute)

The Federal Communications Commission today welcomed two new commissioners to the five-member panel that oversees telecommunications in the United States.

Both new commissioners were sworn in this morning by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, who himself is the subject of some speculation he will leave his position at the agency during a second term of office for President Obama.

Jessica Rosenworcel replaces Democrat Michael Copps, who retired from the Commission.  She previously worked as one of Copps’ legal assistants, and has experience on Capitol Hill and as a staffer at the FCC.

Republican Ajit Varadaraj Pai replaces Meredith Attwell-Baker, who left the Commission to take a position at Comcast.

Baker’s departure was controversial because she participated in a vote that approved the merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal, and now works for the combined entity.

Pai has also worked on the Hill and at the FCC, previously serving in the office of general counsel at the FCC for former chairman Kevin Martin.

The FCC currently has three Democratic and two Republican commissioners.  Most FCC watchers predict the new appointments will not fundamentally change how the agency operates. FCC decisions are often unanimous.