Mediacom, regularly rated America’s worst cable operator by Consumer Reports, is earning its bad reputation when it left one Iowa retirement community with extended outages that began Dec. 20 and did not get resolved for more than two weeks.

Dozens of elderly residents at the Good Life Retirement Apartments in Norwalk, Iowa were unable to talk to anyone except a national technical support center that never connected the dots about the broader outage and only arranged individual service calls that never addressed the larger problem.

When the Des Moines Register’s consumer watchdog began receiving calls, Mediacom finally noticed.

The optics of delivering bad service to a retirement community populated primarily by 70+ year old retirees on fixed incomes that depend on cable television for entertainment delivered the cable company yet another public relations blow.

A Mediacom official finally acknowledged there was a bigger problem. Phyllis Peters, communications director for Mediacom, told the newspaper the outages were due to a “rare and broader issue” that affected customers across Des Moines.

Affected customers have been given credits for the extended outages, finally resolved Jan. 4, but most would have rather received working service.

“With this being a senior community, we don’t get to go out to the movies at night,” Edna Haines told the Register. “Our TV is our entertainment.”

Mediacom claims they are addressing their poor reputation for customer service with two new initiatives:

• Customers left endlessly on hold can select a new call-back feature to request a local employee call back the customer at a pre-selected time;
• Mediacom’s national customer service center (1-800-332-0245) now uses speech recognition to help direct calls to the appropriate department.

A one-way street or Avoidant personality disorder?

Back in July we noticed Time Warner Cable’s Conversations website, engaged in two-way conversations with customers, began a “dialogue” on the issue of its new 5GB usage-capped “Internet Essentials” plan first unveiled in several Texas cities.

The company provided its view that broadband innovation required pricing flexibility with new usage-based broadband plans to offer customers “more choice” and a $5 discount on service if they agreed to limit monthly usage to 5GB or less.

Despite sharing our two cents (and several of our readers tried to add their own as well), we noted none of these views ever appeared online.

This week we checked back and discovered the dialogue had decidedly turned one-way: namely from Time Warner Cable to you. The company deleted the few views that were published on cable television programming costs and removed its comment section altogether.

Our reader Kevin even tried to be generous in his comments to the company last summer, but to no avail.

“I basically told them if usage meter billing is inevitable, then give us no less than 300 GB a month, at a rate of $40 a month,” he wrote. “Seeing how 1 GB of bandwidth and data costs you less than $1 to generate to me, this is more than fair. Doubt they will even read it since it isn’t a ‘wow this is awesome, OMG i luv you so much for this new plan TWC’-message.”

They might have read it, but elected to avoid the uncomfortable notion of sharing the actual costs to provide broadband service to customers. It is not the first time, either.

The inauguration of President Barack Obama for a second term in the White House is brought to you by generous financial contributions from AT&T, Microsoft, and a handful of big health care and pharmaceutical companies that all do business with the federal government.

AT&T, which donated generously to the Romney campaign, has been making amends with the administration remaining in office by underwriting the lavish festivities, despite earlier promises from the Obama Administration not to accept corporate money for the inauguration.

The telecom giant is among seven corporations that have found their way around federal laws that bar contractors from spending money to influence elections. No law stops them from writing big checks for inaugural events or political conventions (see here, here, here, and here for our earlier reports).

AT&T is among the most powerful special interests in Washington, with more than $14 million spent lobbying Congress and federal agencies like the FCC in just the first nine months of 2012, according to The Center for Responsive Politics’ website, Open Secrets.

AT&T handed out nearly $2 million to political action committees, parties, and secretive independent groups that run campaign ads without disclosing who pays for them. Candidates did not suffer for money either. Direct AT&T contributions totaling $3,297,096 were handed to members and would-be members of Congress, with the company heavily favoring Republicans.

Among those winning AT&T checks valued at $10,000 or more were 65 Republicans and 16 Democrats:

But the Money Party doesn’t end there. At least 49 members of the House and Senate that vote on legislation that directly affects AT&T’s bottom line also happen to be shareholders of the company:

Akin, Todd (R-MO)
Berkley, Shelley (D-NV)
Berman, Howard L (D-CA)
Bingaman, Jeff (D-NM)
Boehner, John (R-OH)
Bonner, Jo (R-AL)
Buchanan, Vernon (R-FL)
Burgess, Michael (R-TX)
Cassidy, Bill (R-LA)
Coats, Dan (R-IN)
Coble, Howard (R-NC)
Coburn, Tom (R-OK)
Cohen, Steve (D-TN)
Cole, Tom (R-OK)
Conaway, Mike (R-TX)
Conrad, Kent (D-ND)
Cooper, Jim (D-TN)
Doggett, Lloyd (D-TX)
Frelinghuysen, Rodney (R-NJ)
Gibbs, Bob (R-OH)
Hagan, Kay R (D-NC)
Hanna, Richard (R-NY)
Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R-TX)
Inhofe, James M (R-OK)
Isakson, Johnny (R-GA)
Johnson, Ron (R-WI)
Keating, Bill (D-MA)
Kerry, John (D-MA)
Kingston, Jack (R-GA)
Lance, Leonard (R-NJ)
Marchant, Kenny (R-TX)
McCarthy, Carolyn (D-NY)
McCaskill, Claire (D-MO)
McCaul, Michael (R-TX)
McKinley, David (R-WV)
Perlmutter, Edwin G (D-CO)
Peters, Gary (D-MI)
Renacci, Jim (R-OH)
Rogers, Hal (R-KY)
Sensenbrenner, F James Jr (R-WI)
Sessions, Pete (R-TX)
Smith, Lamar (R-TX)
Tipton, Scott (R-CO)
Upton, Fred (R-MI)
Vitter, David (R-LA)
Webb, James (D-VA)
Welch, Peter (D-VT)
Whitehouse, Sheldon (D-RI)
Whitfield, Ed (R-KY)

AT&T, which Open Secrets deems a “heavy hitter,” also benefits from Washington’s revolving door between public service and private sector lobbying. The group notes at least 63 out of 86 AT&T lobbyists have previously held government jobs, often at the agencies that oversee and regulate the company.

Public Citizen says it is disturbed by revelations companies like AT&T, Microsoft, and various pharmaceutical and health care interests like Centene and Genentech-Roche Pharmaceuticals have been allowed to contribute because all of them are in business with the federal government. AT&T has been awarded more than $101 million in federal contracts this fiscal year. Microsoft, which spent $5.7 million lobbying Washington has earned most of that back with $4.6 million in contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, and other federal agencies.

Almost none of the companies contacted by USA Today were willing to return calls or comment on the contributions. But Public Citizen did go on the record with the newspaper.

“Such donations are more troubling when they come from companies that have significant ongoing business with the federal government,” said Robert Weissman, the group’s president. “They will expect a very good hearing regarding any concerns, complaints or aspirations they might have.”

The Roku set top streaming device.

The days of renting expensive set top boxes from Time Warner Cable may finally be coming to an end, at least if you happen to subscribe to the cable company’s broadband service.

Time Warner Cable this week announced a new partnership with Roku that will bring 300 Time Warner Cable channels to the video streaming device.

Time Warner Cable customers who also own Roku devices will soon find a TWC “channel” on the menu, from which subscribers can access the same streamed content found on the cable company’s viewing apps for iOS and Android devices. The service represents true IPTV television — an all digital experience streamed over Time Warner Cable’s broadband service.

Customers only have to pay for the Roku device, which ranges from $50-100. Lower priced units do not deliver a true HD viewing experience. Higher priced models support 1080p viewing and support additional features like motion control for games and external USB and Ethernet ports. Time Warner Cable currently limits HD viewing to 480p on its streaming apps, so a cheaper unit may suffice for secondary television sets.

Roku boxes also offer cable customers other viewing options apart from Time Warner Cable, including independent networks, games, movie channels, foreign language and ethnic programming, religious entertainment, global news, and a variety of self-produced and public access programming from cities around the country. Roku boxes also support Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand.

But there are a few downsides, at least for the moment. Local broadcast channels are not currently available except in New York City, but that is expected to change soon. Recording programming delivered over a Roku box is not easily possible, and viewing will reduce available bandwidth on your broadband connection.

Considering Time Warner now charges just shy of $8.50 a month for each set top box, switching to Roku will pay for itself in as little as six months. Time Warner Cable expects most customers will consider the streaming device for televisions in bedrooms and guest rooms.

Saratoga, Calif.-based Roku has had a blockbuster year, doubling the number of its employees and approaching five million units sold. Last year, consumers watched more than one billion hours of television over Roku devices.

[flv width=”534″ height=”320″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NY1 TWC and Roku 1-8-13.mp4[/flv]

Time Warner Cable’s NY1 reports on the Roku-Time Warner partnership that will let customers stream the cable company’s lineup without a traditional set top box. (1 minute)

The nation’s largest broadband stimulus grant recipient has turned a $126.3 million taxpayer funded broadband expansion program into an “orchestrated train wreck,” charged West Virginia Delegate Nancy Guthrie (D-Kanawha) on Monday.

West Virginia Homeland Security Director Jimmy Gianato defended his management of the project before a joint state House-Senate technology committee just learning it had been scaled back, dropping more than 400 sites that were slated to have fiber broadband upgrades Gianato claimed they already had.

Gianato defended the project, noting the original grant proposal was held up by the Commerce Secretary as one of the best-written proposals in the country.

Lawmakers did not criticize how the proposal was written. Instead, they questioned how the project was administered and how the money was spent.

“We’ve done everything the grant said we would do,” Gianato countered.

Many of the questions surrounded the decision to purchase 1,064 Cisco routers in 2010, which cost taxpayers $22,600 each, and were rejected by more than a few intended recipients. Several hundred routers ended up in storage, unused.

Still murky is why project managers only considered a single, expensive Cisco-brand router recommended by Verizon-employed consultants and ultimately purchased directly from Verizon.

Guthrie

Gianato claimed the federal government tied his hands requiring West Virginia’s broadband project be “shovel-ready.”

“All of the equipment was bought off contracts that had been competitively bid,” he told the conference.

But project managers and consultants can custom-tailor specifications that make it impossible for vendors to specify anything other than the Cisco router Verizon conveniently happened to sell.

Several members appeared unmoved by statements defending the decision to deploy identical, expensive routers to every West Virginia anchor institution, despite the fact they were designed to serve a minimum of 500 concurrent users and often ended up in rural community libraries with less than five public terminals.

Gale Given, the state’s chief technology officer, supported Gianato.

“The team determined that capacity should be provided to permit these community anchor institutions to deploy the applications that were required to meet future needs, not their current needs,” Given wrote in a letter to state lawmakers. “It would be a mistake to determine in advance that entities with low bandwidth requirements today will not have high bandwidth requirements in the future. To have shortchanged our smaller, more rural areas would have gone against the entire intent of the program.”

But now West Virginia taxpayers will be on the hook to cover the costs of making the new equipment compatible with existing equipment in certain state facilities.

At least 70 State Police detachments will begin using the once-rejected routers once the state spends $90,000 for new modules to update the agency’s voicemail system, which is not compatible with the routers.

State libraries also won a break from Frontier Communications, who agreed to supply fiber broadband service to 170 mostly small, rural libraries that could not afford the fiber upgrade. Frontier has agreed to supply the fiber service for the same price libraries pay for their existing service.