Despite claims from some industry-backed researchers and former members of Congress that Net Neutrality has reduced investment in telecommunications, a new research note from Deutsche Bank shows America’s top telephone and cable companies are spending billions on fiber upgrades to power wireless, business, and consumer broadband.

“Telecoms have become much more public signaling their intent to increase fiber investment, with AT&T and Verizon leading the spending ramp,” reports Deutsche Bank Markets Research.

Verizon has been on a fiber spending spree in the northeastern United States, signing contracts with Corning and Prysmian worth $1.3 billion to guarantee a steady supply of 2.5 million miles of fiber optic cable Verizon plans to buy over the next three years. Much of that spending allows Verizon to lay a foundation for its future 5G wireless services, which will require fiber to the neighborhood networks. But in cities like Boston, Verizon is also once again expanding its FiOS fiber to the home service to consumers.

AT&T is committed to connecting 12.5 million homes to gigabit-ready fiber broadband by 2019 — part of a deal it made with the FCC to win approval of its acquisition of DirecTV. AT&T claims it has already connected 5.5 million homes to its gigabit AT&T Fiber network, expected to reach 7 million by the end of this year.

Deutsche Bank thinks providers’ future drive towards 5G service will also simultaneously benefit fiber to the home expansion, because the same fiber network can power both services.

“To support the upcoming innovations such as autonomous driving, IoT, smart cities, the US needs to densify its fiber network,” Deutsche Bank said. “The U.S. fiber penetration rate is 20% vs. 75% for leading OECD countries, which suggests a large gap needs to be closed.”

Altice founder Patrick Drahi (second from left) and Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei (center) visit a Cablevision fiber deployment on Long Island, N.Y.

The bank predicts companies will spend around $175 billion over the next 10 years building out their fiber networks, with most of the spending coming from the phone companies, who may see fiber buildouts as their best attempt to level the playing field with cable operators’ hybrid fiber-coaxial cable networks. As cable operators expand their networks to reach more business parks, they have been gradually stealing market share for phone and data services from phone companies. Consumer broadband is also increasingly dominated by cable operators in areas where phone companies still rely on selling DSL services.

FierceCable notes Comcast and Altice have stepped up aggressive spending on fiber networks for their consumer and business customers. Altice is planning to decommission Cablevision’s existing coaxial cable network and move customers to fiber-to-the-home service. Comcast is deploying fiber services while still selling traditional cable broadband upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1, which supports substantially faster broadband speeds. The two networks co-exist side-by-side. Customer need dictates which network Comcast will use to supply service.

Customers benefit differently in each state, depending on what type of service is available. Comcast’s large footprint in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, is usually served by traditional coaxial cable. Verizon still sells DSL in much of the state. In Massachusetts, Verizon is building out its FiOS network to serve metro Boston while Comcast will depend on DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades to speed up its internet service. In New Jersey, long a battleground for Verizon’s FiOS service the company stopped aggressively expanding several years ago, Comcast has announced DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades for the entire state.

Independent phone companies are also seeing a bleak future without fiber upgrades. Both CenturyLink and Windstream are planning moderately aggressive fiber expansion, particularly in urban service areas and where they face fierce cable competition. Frontier continues its more modest approach to fiber expansion, usually placing fiber in new housing developments and in places where its copper facilities have been severely damaged or have to be relocated because of infrastructure projects.

None of the companies have cited Net Neutrality as a factor in their future broadband expansion plans. In fact, fiber networks have opened the door to new business opportunities to the companies installing them, and the high-capacity networks are likely to further reduce traffic/transit costs, while boosting speeds. That undercuts the business model of selling digital slow and fast lanes.

Connecticut taxpayers will underwrite the cost of Charter Communications new 500,000 square foot, 15-story headquarters building with a $10 million direct loan and an additional $10 million in tax credits.

The cable company, which has the highest paid CEO in the United States, will use taxpayer dollars to help fund its new corporate offices at the Gateway Harbor Point, with an option to further expand the site into a two building campus. It won taxpayer support for committing to create 400 jobs in 2012 under the state’s First Five Program. Now it has agreed to create an additional 1,100 jobs at its corporate headquarters in Stamford and make an investment of $100 million in capital expenditures in Connecticut over several years. The more jobs Charter creates in Stamford, the more tax credits the company can receive.

“Since relocating Charter’s headquarter operations to Stamford in 2012, the company has undergone a transformation to become the second largest cable provider in the U.S.,” said Tom Rutledge, chairman and CEO, Charter Communications. “This new, state-of-the-art facility in downtown Stamford will provide Charter the necessary resources to facilitate its continued growth. We are excited to continue expanding in Connecticut, and thank Governor Malloy, Mayor Martin, the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, and the entire Stamford-area federal, state and local delegation of elected officials for their continued partnership and support.”

“Today is a great day for Connecticut,” said Governor Dannel P. Malloy. “Charter’s announcement to create an additional 1,100 jobs shows that our strategic investments are continuing to spur economic growth and create good paying jobs in the state. We look forward to the continued success of Charter Communications as they grow within the state.”

What has been good for Connecticut has not proven so great for Charter Communications workers in other states. Several hundred have been laid off, mostly at call centers. But a number of employees working at Time Warner Cable’s headquarters in Manhattan have also left.

Bell’s “candy bribe” (Image: VHS)

Bell is dispatching boxes of fiber-free candy to potential customers of its fiber-to-the-home Fibe service.

A member of DSL Reports noted Bell’s fiber was installed in his condo building in Toronto for a year, but only now has Bell gotten around to activate it.

“Bell sent me this package of candy to let me know I can sign up for Fibe,” the user ‘VHS’ noted. “Kind of funny they offered me candy.”

More amusing is the fact the candy is entirely free of any dietary fiber.

Bell’s marketing and sales teams are notorious for getting ahead of themselves, often selling service by mail and door to door that isn’t actually yet available in the area. Some customers complain they finally relent to an intense marketing campaign and wait around for an installer that never arrives, only learning later their installation order was canceled without explanation.

As Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands enter another week mostly in darkness, a TV station owner is accused of putting its financial well-being ahead of storm victims getting access to the latest news and developments after ordering its One Caribbean TV channel off the lineup of Dish Networks in a contract dispute.

Lilly Broadcasting pulled the station off the satellite service over the weekend in a move slammed by Dish as a cynical ploy.

Lilly has “turn[ed] its back on public interest obligations during [a] humanitarian crisis [and is using a] catastrophe to create ‘deal leverage,’” Dish Network said in a statement. “[Lilly] is demanding from Dish and, by extension, its customers unreasonable rate increases higher than the current Dish rate. Lilly has also refused Dish’s offer to match the rates paid by other pay-TV channels.”

Dish called Lilly’s move an attempt to “further blind the citizens of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands at this time, showing an unbelievable lack of compassion” and added it was a “prime example of why Washington needs to stand up for consumers and end local channel blackouts.”

Exactly how many viewers One Caribbean TV still has in either U.S. territory is unknown. Power is almost universally unavailable and many satellite dishes were turned into flying projectiles in hurricane force winds. But the optics of pulling a station delivering frequent hurricane recovery updates off the lineup at such a critical time was seen as bad publicity and Lilly quickly relented after the office of FCC chairman Ajit Pai got involved.

“Chairman Pai’s office was in touch with both Lilly Broadcasting and Dish yesterday (Oct. 1) and expressed its concern about the impact of this dispute on the people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” an FCC spokesman told Multichannel News. ” We are pleased that the parties agreed to restore carriage of One Caribbean Television last night following these phone calls.”

Satellite Business News reported Lilly Broadcasting Chief Operating Officer John Christianson authorized restoring service in the storm areas.

“We have told Dish Network that they can continue to carry One Caribbean Television in Puerto Rico and the [U.S. Virgin Islands], to help those that can still see the networks keep informed as to what is happening in their region.”

Countless legacy Charter Communications customers in communities that have been served by the company long before it acquired Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks spent much of Sunday without service due to a software or firmware failure with one or more of their backbone routers.

The company confirmed a widespread outage in California and the southeastern U.S. on Sunday and anecdotal reports from customers complaining about the outage indicate it affected customers the most in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina.

The outage did not seem to impact most of Charter’s acquired customers from Time Warner Cable and Bright House, which apparently still operate on different networks, which is why many Californians that live in areas formerly served by Time Warner Cable did not experience the outage while legacy Charter customers did.

Charter confirmed affected customers will not be getting automatic service credits for the outage. Customers must request a credit by phone or using online chat.

Customers were not impressed.

My bill keeps going up & service continually gets worse. 7 days in Sept we’ve had no internet service, 3 days no TV.

— Vickie Allen (@saltygirl454) October 2, 2017

We are still working to resolve the service outage affecting Southeastern States and parts of Texas, California, and Louisiana. Thank you.

— Ask Spectrum (@Ask_Spectrum) October 1, 2017

There is a known routing issue. I asked if you rebooted the equipment as for some customers are coming back onlin… https://t.co/ziTRqxWrjK

— Ask Spectrum (@Ask_Spectrum) October 2, 2017