The Federal Communications Commission has opened the door for Time Warner Cable to raise basic cable rates in several parts of Ohio and California after ruling the company faces effective competition from Dish Networks and DirecTV.

Under FCC rules cable rates for the broadcast basic tier, which includes local television stations and a handful of basic cable networks, remain regulated by the government until a cable operator can prove at least 50 percent of their service area is covered by a competing provider and 15 percent of its would-be customers are signed up with a competitor.

Cable companies have requested rate deregulation in countless communities as satellite and television service from phone companies penetrates their markets. Once rates are deregulated, cable operators can raise them to whatever price they believe the marketplace will bear.

In several affected communities, Time Warner Cable’s service is so uncompelling, almost half of the households have signed up for satellite service instead.

The communities affected in Ohio:

• City of Bellefontaine
• Howard Township
• Village of Huntsville
• Village of Lakeview
• McArthur Township
• North Bloomfield Township
• Village of Russells Point
• Stokes Township
• Washington Township
• Village of Zanesville

In California:

• Bradford

Shaw Communications has acquired Calgary’s largest fiber optic cable network in a $225 million deal with ENMAX Corp. in a bid to strengthen its ability to serve large corporate customers who need more bandwidth than Shaw is now positioned to offer.

ENMAX sells its Envision fiber service to large corporate clients in and around downtown Calgary and to those businesses that need dedicated connectivity across multiple offices. The acquisition will further enhance Shaw’s dominance in Calgary. Shaw remains western Canada’s largest cable operator with an emphasis on serving Alberta and British Columbia.

Shaw’s business plan, revamped last year, is much closer to American cable operators than Rogers Communications — the dominant cable company in eastern Canada. Shaw abandoned its mobile ambitions and will stay out of the cellular business. In January, Shaw announced its intentions to sell its AWS wireless spectrum holding to Rogers.

Shaw has also ended efforts to expand eastward after announcing it would sell Mountain Cablevision, Ltd., which serves parts of Hamilton and the Niagara Region of Ontario, to Rogers.

In 2013, Shaw subscribers can expect to see a broadening of the company’s growing Wi-Fi network — available free of charge to its broadband customers, a major upgrade to its DreamGallery set-top box software interface, and the completion of plans to switch its cable television lineup to an all-digital format by the end of this year.

Canada’s three major independent wireless companies have resigned from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association after claiming the group maintained a consistent bias in favor of the three largest carriers in the country.

Wind Mobile Canada, Public Mobile, and Mobilicity announced their departure in a joint press release.

“From this point, the CWTA does not, and cannot claim to speak on behalf of the Canadian mobile wireless sector,” said the news release.

“It has been evident for quite some time that, rather than being a true industry association which represents the views of all players regardless of size, the CWTA has instead largely been an advocate for Rogers, Telus, and Bell, and often directly contrary to the interests of new entrant wireless carriers,” said Bob Boron, general counsel and senior vice president of legal & regulatory affairs for Public Mobile.

“We have spent the better part of three years repeatedly voicing our opposition to the CWTA on a wide range of matters to the point of issuing a press release in January 2011 that publicly expressed our dissent on the CWTA’s position on wireless consumer protection,” added Gary Wong, director of legal affairs for Mobilicity. “There seems to be a blatant disregard of the new entrants in favor of acting in the best interests of the big three carriers, and it is unacceptable.”

The carriers suggest WCTA officials lured them into the trade association to bolster claims the group represents the collective interests of Canadian mobile providers. Once enrolled as members, the independents claim their concerns were ignored on a variety of issues.

“When we first approached the CWTA, we were promised clear and fair representation on issues of true industry alignment. But despite making our objections and concerns abundantly clear on numerous occasions, the CWTA has repeatedly failed to honor this promise, leaving us no alternative but to withdraw,” said Simon Lockie, chief regulatory officer at Wind Mobile.

Among the major points of contention:

• The independents favor transparency on mobile phone bills, with better disclosure of which services are optional or mandatory, the exact pricing of those services, contract termination fees and penalties. The three major carriers oppose anything beyond self-regulation;
• The CWTA argues Canadians have a highly competitive wireless marketplace with rates to match. The independent providers strongly disagree, claiming Canadians pay some of the highest rates in the world for cell service;
• The CWTA favors and supports three-year contracts for cell phone service, the independent providers do not.

“The many contributions of Wind, Mobilicity and Public Mobile will certainly be missed, and CWTA would welcome their return to the association in the future,” a CWTA official said in a written statement.

What is the best way to win a big promotion at Cablevision? Be related to the Dolan family that founded the cable system.

Cablevision Systems CEO James Dolan suddenly announced a shuffling of executives at the helm of the cable operation that serves suburban New York, Connecticut, and parts of New Jersey.

Dolan’s wife got the biggest promotion: president of Optimum Services. That represents a big jump for Kristin Dolan, who was last seen helping revive the long dead career of Michael Bolton in a marketing and rebranding exercise that turned the faded pop musician into a de facto Cablevision mascot. Under her leadership, Cablevision managed to put its most important product — broadband, dead last in its triple play marketing campaigns.

Brian Sweeney, Dolan’s brother-in-law, also scored a new title – senior executive vice president of strategy.

Dolan called the management shifts a pro-customer effort that would refocus and streamline the company’s decision-making processes. Since both executives will report directly to Dolan, some industry insiders believe James Dolan intends to tightly consolidate his control over management decisions at the company.

Kristin will keep her role as chief of brand positioning and expand her oversight into the company’s sales and promotional activities. Sweeney will serve as the “long-term strategy” guy, overseeing planning, customer retention, and winning customers away from Cablevision’s biggest competitor — Verizon FiOS.

A large number of former Cablevision executives defected from the cable company in 2011, most heading with former chief operating officer Tom Rutledge to Charter Communications.

Compare Optimum/Cablevision’s Marketing Campaigns: Before <- Kristin Dolan -> With

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Cablevision Ad 2008.flv[/flv]

Cablevision’s ‘Before Kristin’ Advertising (1 minute)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Cablevision Bolton 2-15-13.flv[/flv]

Cablevision’s ‘With Kristin’ Advertising (1 minute)

AT&T suddenly announced it was ready to build its own gigabit fiber network in Austin.

AT&T and Time Warner Cable report they are ready to make more investments in their operations in Austin, Tex. to compete with Google Fiber when it arrives in the middle of next year.

Time Warner Cable says it already operates a multi-gigabit fiber optic network — one residential customers cannot easily access or afford. Residential broadband speeds at the cable operator top out at 50/5Mbps in Austin, at a cost higher than what Google plans to charge for 1,000/1,000Mbps service. AT&T’s U-verse network maxes out at 24/3Mbps, assuming customers have good copper wiring between AT&T’s fiber in the neighborhood and their home.

“The cable and phone company providers have purposely confused their networks’ maximum speed capacity with real end-user speeds for years, and when that fails to convince they simply claim customers don’t need or want those speeds anyway,” says Stop the Cap! reader and Austin resident Sam Knoll.

Knoll is enthusiastic about giving Time Warner Cable the boot, partly to pay them back for their aborted consumption billing trial attempted in Austin in 2009.

“I am not completely convinced Time Warner Cable understands just how much damage they did to their reputation when they pulled that stunt, and I’m certain they will attempt it again if they have a chance,” Knoll said. “The best thing customers can do is switch to a provider that believes usage caps and consumption billing are the fraudulent ripoff we know them to be. Google already knows this.”

Some Time Warner Cable customers in Austin never forgot the company tried to meter Internet usage in a failed experiment back in 2009. (Image: The Austinst)

Competition from deep-pocketed Google could eventually transform the broadband business model for American providers, assuming Google builds its fiber network in enough cities to challenge the conventional wisdom that prices have plenty of room to grow with faster Internet access. The more customers that sign up for Google’s already-super-fast broadband, the more providers will have to compete with better and faster service.

But AT&T is not convinced. The company announced yesterday it was prepared to build a gigabit fiber network not just in Austin, but also in surrounding Williamson County, with plenty of caveats.

“[We will only build the network if] the demand is there and if we get the same terms and conditions as Google received,” said AT&T spokeswoman Tracy King.

AT&T told the Austin American-Statesman the company wanted a faster regulatory approval process and permission to only build its faster fiber network in neighborhoods where there is proven demand for the service. Current franchise agreements often compel providers to offer service throughout the community and prohibits “cherry-picking” customers in high-income or low construction cost areas.

An AT&T official told KEYE-TV he had no idea how much AT&T would charge for gigabit broadband. Google charges $70 a month in Kansas City.

Austin has promised cooperation with Google, although it is not extending tax breaks or grants to the search engine giant. Google will get easy access to Austin Energy’s municipally owned infrastructure including utility poles and rights-of-way.

Google is speculated to be building showcase fiber networks to embarrass incumbent cable and phone providers who typically sell standard broadband service with speeds of 6-15Mbps in most larger communities. Rural areas are lucky to have 3Mbps service, and often much less.

But if Google intended to force major upgrades by cable and phone companies across the country, it might be disappointed with the response so far from AT&T and Time Warner Cable. Both companies indicate they will invest in and upgrade their networks to compete, but only in the service areas where Google-style competition exists. For the rest of the country, phone and cable companies are prepared to continue with the current “broadband scarcity” business model that delivers upgrades only occasionally, often accompanied by usage limits, consumption billing, and/or higher prices.

“Google has proved that there is a business model for selling abundant bandwidth as opposed to a business model for allocating scarce bandwidth,” said Blair Levin, a former chief of staff of the Federal Communications Commission.

“They are saying this is not an experiment. It is a business,” Levin told the newspaper. “In Kansas City, Google did the country an enormous favor. They said, give us regulatory flexibility to design the business and give us access to city property so we can build a network to lower the cost.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380”]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KEYE Austin Competitor Chimes In After Google Announcement 4-9-13.flv[/flv]

KEYE in Austin talks with AT&T about their plans for a gigabit broadband network to compete with Google Fiber. The AT&T spokesman seemed more interested in pitching the company’s deregulation agenda and was short on specifics.  (3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KXAN Austin What competition will Google Fiber face 4-9-13.mp4[/flv]

KXAN in Austin talked with Google competitors Time Warner Cable and AT&T about how they will respond to the Google Fiber challenge.   (3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KVUE Austin Fiber Wars in Austin 4-9-13.mp4[/flv]

KVUE in Austin called Google’s entry into the city the opening salvo of ‘Fiber Wars,’ as AT&T promises its own gigabit network. Austin residents intend to take advantage of the competition to force providers to give them better deals to keep their business.  (3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KXAN Austin Google Fiber Possibilities Google Insider 4-9-13.mp4[/flv]

KXAN explains the possibilities of gigabit fiber, but also asks a former Google insider why the search engine is getting into the broadband business.  (5 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KTBC Austin Time Warner Cable Responds to Google 4-9-13.mp4[/flv]

KTBC was skeptical of AT&T’s sudden interest in gigabit broadband. “Gee, what a coincidence,” commented the anchor of Austin’s Fox affiliate.  (2 minutes)