Verizon will conveniently add fraudsters’ phone and service orders to your wireless bill until you catch the illegitimate charges and complain.

That is the basis of a new class action lawsuit filed in New York accusing the wireless company of billing customers for fraudulently obtained equipment and service.

Brooklyn lawyer Lowell Sidney told the New York Post it took five months of “autopay” charges almost $100 higher than normal before he noticed someone had obtained a new smartphone and service and billed it to his Verizon Wireless account.

“[Verizon] Fraud Services said that on Oct. 22, 2016, an unknown person entered a Best Buy store in Wesley Chapel, Florida, claimed to be [Sidney], and ordered a cellphone and phone service from Verizon,’’ the suit said. When Best Buy asked for ID, the imposter ran out of the store.

But that did not stop Verizon from running up Sidney’s bill for several months of phone financing installments and service charges.

Sidney’s lawyer told the newspaper it was clear the guy was a crook, but that did not stop Verizon from collecting money it knew didn’t belong to them.

Verizon’s fraud department confirmed Verizon’s corporate policy is not to notify customers about potential, suspected, or actual fraud. It is entirely up to customers to identify suspicious charges and prove to Verizon’s satisfaction those charges are illegitimate.

“The woman I spoke to was very candid — ‘That’s our policy,’” reported an outraged Sidney, and he’s suing to make the point Verizon should be doing a better job of protecting customers and should not be collecting money to which it is not entitled. He wants at least $75,000 in damages and wants other Verizon customers affected by fraud to receive settlements as well. He is also taking his business elsewhere after 17 years with Verizon.

“I am not sure if the competition provides comparable service, but to my knowledge, they don’t actively engage in defrauding their own customers,” Sidney said.

Sidney warns that “autopay” and electronic billing make it more difficult for consumers to scrutinize their bills and catch fraudulent charges because they have to seek out a monthly statement instead of getting one sent directly to them.

AT&T wants to pass 12.9 million homes with its fiber to the home upgrade, but is upset about the price of those doing the work.

In an effort to cut costs, Fierce Telecom reports AT&T is discontinuing the practice of having two technicians prepare a home or business for fiber — one working outdoors on the fiber drop to the home and the other installing inside equipment like wiring, set-top boxes and gateways. Now one AT&T technician or subcontractor is expected to do it all.

“Originally we had a technician who placed the fiber drop and ONT [optical network terminal] on the side of the home and then they turned it over a technician inside the house that get the customer going with their services,” said Kent McCammon, lead member of technical staff at AT&T Labs. “The desire was to have what was formerly called the inside technicians perform the fiber drop, but in order to do that we had to train technicians who were not using to dealing with fiber.”

An AT&T Fiber cable placed on a pole in Dunwoody, Ga. (Image: Heneghan’s Dunwoody Blog)

To simplify training and cut costs, AT&T has been using field installed mechanical connections and pre-connectorized fiber drops, which means the installer no longer has to manually splice fiber cable connections, saving time. But as a result the technicians can no longer test the actual performance of the fiber connection to the home.

“When the technicians did a mechanical connection, you don’t have the visibility like you do with a fusion splicer where you can actually see it’s a good connection,” McCammon said. “[Once] the ONT’s green light turned on […] they left whether it was well done or not.”

That has been a risk AT&T is willing to take to speed expansion of fiber service to more of its customers, but it has also increased the number of service calls when customers are left with substandard service.

“In our recent analysis we did a few weeks ago, we’re seeing lines with variable optical power,” McCammon said, a sure sign there is a technical fault. “It’s 5% of the areas where we have installed fiber so 95% of the cases have a good connection.”

In most cases, McCammon said problems are usually the result of a bad connector and when it is replaced, power levels return to normal. It’s up to customers to notice a problem and call it in for now, but AT&T is studying whether optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) capability could be deployed to detect problems like air gaps or high reflection points inside the fiber.

AT&T is also reviewing how future fiber technologies can co-exist with AT&T’s current GPON fiber network. The technologies that can currently overlap AT&T’s GPON network are XGS-PON and NG-PON2. AT&T is currently reviewing XGS-PON to see if it would be suitable to deploy symmetrical 10Gbps service in the future.

“We’re getting started XGS-PON,” McCammon said. “We have it in the lab and we’re starting the IT work on that system right now, and unless something changes, that’s where we’re headed after GPON for consumer and potentially for business.”

Cable magnate John Malone’s Liberty Interactive today announced it would acquire Alaska’s largest cable operator General Communication, Inc. (GCI) for $1.12 billion in an all-stock transaction.

Malone is the biggest individual shareholder of Charter Communications, Inc., and has decades of experience running cable companies in the lower 48 states and abroad. He also has experience structuring deals to avoid the U.S. tax authorities, and this deal is no different. Malone will pay zero taxes on the transaction by creatively spinning off the cable operator, first rechristening it as QVC Corp (named after his home shopping channel), then combining QVC Corp with Liberty Ventures and splitting off the combined company to existing Liberty Ventures shareholders. When the transaction is complete, Malone will again rename the cable company GCI Liberty and keep all the proceeds for himself and his shareholders.

GCI’s 108,000 customers won’t see any changes at the cable company and wireless venture this year. The deal is not scheduled to close until 2018.

GCI’s oldest customers may recall John Malone used to own the Alaskan cable operator, but under a different name. Until 1986, it was part of Malone’s Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) empire.

Expensive and usage-capped.

Malone’s operating philosophy these days is best represented by Charter Communications. GCI customers can eventually expect to see a dramatically simplified menu of choices for broadband, television, and telephone service. Broadband from GCI is expensive and usage-capped. Its $60 entry-level plan offers 50/3Mbps service that is “speed reduced” after 50GB of usage a month. For that reason, many customers prefer GCI’s “Faster” plan of 100/5Mbps service for $84.99 a month, with speeds curtailed after 250GB of usage. A gigabit tier is available in certain locations offering 1,000/50Mbps for $174.99 a month, speed-throttled after 1TB of usage.

With the transition from Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks to Charter Communications now complete, starting today all stories referring to Charter/Spectrum, Time Warner Cable or Bright House Networks will be found under “Charter Spectrum” in our provider list.

Regardless of the name change, media reports from around the country have little positive to say about customers’ experiences with “New Charter.”

Industry consolidation from mergers and acquisitions does nothing to improve competition, something essential to fix the broken broadband market in the United States, as this PSA illustrates:

Charter Communications is facing a second lawsuit related to false advertising about its ability to provide fast internet service and allegations the company knowingly supplied customers with deficient equipment.

Hart et al. v. Charter Communications Inc., is seeking certification as a nationwide class action from a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The suit claims that Charter’s subsidiary Time Warner Cable purposely leased out modems and wireless routers it knew were incapable of achieving Time Warner Cable Maxx broadband speeds, consistently oversold its broadband network — resulting in slower internet speeds and performance than the company advertised, and raised customers’ bills without adequate notice.

The California lawsuit closely mirrors one filed in February by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and focuses on similar claims that Charter is engaged in “false representations and other wrongful business practices.”

The complaint claims:

• The company willfully and intentionally advertised internet service it could not provide, claiming customers would receive internet service that was “fast” with “no buffering,” “no slowdowns,” “no lag,” “without interruptions,” “without downtime,” and “without the wait.”
• Charter leased older generation modems and wireless routers to many of their customers that were incapable of supporting the promised internet speeds. Older technology modems could not provide the full benefit of Time Warner Cable Maxx speeds of 100-300Mbps, and company-provided network gateways delivered Wi-Fi service at speeds considerably lower than advertised.
• Charter regularly failed to manage their network in a manner that would give customers consistent broadband speeds. Instead, “Defendants included too many subscribers in the same service group and provided too few channels for such subscriber, thus causing an internet ‘traffic jam’ (particularly during peak hours) that slowed every subscriber’s connection to speeds substantially below what was promised and paid-for. Indeed, even when consumers resorted to using wired connections, their Internet speeds still fell short of the promised speeds.”
• Defendants also have adopted an unlawful and unfair practice of adding new fees or other charges to consumers’ bills without adequate notice and outside of the terms promised upon sign-up. In 2016, one customer signed up for a promotional “Spectrum Internet with Wi-Fi” plan with a fixed rate of $64.99 and a $10.00 “Promotional Discount,” making her plan cost a total of $54.99 per month. This amount was reflected in her February 2017 bill. However, on her March 2017 bill, the customer was automatically charged $59.99, a $5.00 increase of which she was not given adequate notice and which was improperly charged to her credit card automatically.

The lawyers bringing the case propose to include as class members anyone who purchased internet service from Time Warner Cable/Charter Communications nationwide, those who believed the company’s advertising that claimed speeds were fast and reliable, and customers enrolled in auto-pay who were not properly informed of changes in price or the terms of service. If certified, the potential size of the class action case could involve millions of customers.