Frontier Communications plans to leverage their existing fiber-copper infrastructure to offer broadband-powered television service for up to half of their national customer base over the next four years.

Like many Frontier initiatives, the company’s IPTV effort relies on minimal spending, with just $150 million in capital budgeted for the project, spread out over several years.

“Our plans are to introduce video service to more than 40 markets representing approximately three million households over a three- to four-year period,” said Frontier CEO Daniel McCarthy. “Once complete, video service will be available to about 50% of the 8.5 million households in Frontier’s existing footprint, not counting the pending Verizon acquisition.”

Frontier intends to sell the service to the 57% of customers it claims can receive at least 20Mbps broadband speed. The video streams will co-exist with customers’ data service.

“Our IPTV applications employ the latest very advanced compression technology,” said McCarthy. “[Each] HD television channel will require approximately 2.5Mbps of capacity, meaning a household with four HDTVs active at once will require 10Mbps of capacity into the home, leaving the remainder available for data usage.”

Frontier’s IPTV approach is similar to AT&T U-verse. The company will depend on fiber to the neighborhood service already in place in certain markets, coupled with existing copper wiring already on telephone poles or buried underground in each neighborhood. To further minimize expenses (and customer inconvenience), Frontier will rely on customer-installable wireless set-top boxes that can be relocated to any television in the home.

McCarthy

Frontier has experimented with its video service since last fall in its test market of Durham, N.C. That city also benefits from an extensive fiber upgrade undertaken by Frontier. Frontier’s website sells the service as Frontier FiOS TV, even though Durham’s fiber network was built by Frontier, not Verizon.

For customers, it will likely be a welcome change from Frontier’s ongoing dependence on its partnership with satellite provider Dish Networks to offer video service. One clue Frontier has not well withstood heavy competition from competing cable operators comes from the company’s latest quarterly earnings report. Frontier executives admitted voice service disconnects are accelerating beyond expectation and average revenue per customer dropped 1.1% to $63.14 for the fourth quarter of 2015.

Frontier also continues to feel the wrath of former AT&T customers in Connecticut that withstood a messy “flash cut” from AT&T to Frontier that left some customers without service for days. Despite the expiration of special pricing promotions for Connecticut customers resulting in the prospect of higher revenue, Frontier still recorded a $7 million decline from Connecticut alone, which it mostly blamed on customers ditching landlines. In the rest of the country, Frontier’s “legacy service areas” (those still dependent on aging copper infrastructure) delivered another $4 million decline in revenue for the quarter.

Where are those customers going? Cable operators continue to grab Frontier’s unhappy DSL customers and wireless companies continue to benefit from landline disconnects.

To prevent a repeat of Connecticut in the Frontier-acquired Verizon territories in Florida, California, and Texas, Frontier will keep Verizon’s service plans and only gradually shift services away from Verizon, with the ability to back out of the transition immediately if something goes wrong.

Frontier’s IPTV service will depend on the classic cable television model — 100+ local, network, and cable channels delivered in a bundle with broadband and voice service. At the outset, Frontier won’t be emphasizing skinny bundles of TV channels, but will allow existing Verizon FiOS customers to keep the slimmed down packages they already have.

Time Warner Cable will upgrade its Cincinnati area customers to Time Warner Cable Maxx service offering broadband speeds up to 200Mbps by this summer.

The Cincinnati Business Courier was the first to report on the upgrade, which has yet to be officially announced by Time Warner Cable, but has been confirmed by a company spokesperson.

The upgrade started Feb. 15 and is expected to be complete in some areas by June, in part thanks to the fact Time Warner’s network in northern Kentucky was inherited from Insight Communications, which Time Warner acquired in 2011. Insight had previously upgraded most of its facilities to all-digital service. Elsewhere, Time Warner has to first upgrade customers to all-digital cable television, which begins with a notification to customers that they will be losing analog television service and will need a set-top box or other equipment for each cable-equipped set in the home.

The conversion to all-digital service frees up bandwidth to boost broadband speeds, giving customers considerably faster service at no extra cost. Standard customers now subscribed to 15Mbps service will be upgraded to 50Mbps. Customers currently frustrated by Time Warner’s top speed of 50Mbps in Ohio will get an upgrade to 300Mbps. Former Insight customers will be the first to get the faster speeds, starting in March. Other Cincinnati area customers may have to wait until summer or fall before the new speeds arrive.

Some Time Warner customers may need to replace their current cable modem, including those now leased by the company for $10 a month.

To ease the transition, Time Warner Cable will provide existing TV customers with one or more digital adapters at no charge through at least June 29, 2017, provided they order an adapter by Oct. 22, 2016. Customers can consult Time Warner’s website for local updates and ordering information.

Karma’s very expensive $150 startup equipment package.

After customers spent $150 on a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot device promising unlimited LTE wireless Internet access for $50 a month, Karma – the company offering the service – has put a stop to its “Neverstop” plan four months after introducing it.

“Karma is a bitch,” complained one customer who spent $250 with Karma trying to find a replacement for Clear’s now discontinued WiMAX service for his rural home. “After spending hundreds for nothing, it should be obvious to everyone why Karma turned off the comment section on its website.”

Neverstop customers have been through a rough ride during the brief life of the service, which started last November. Customers were promised unlimited 5Mbps service for $50 a month, after buying the $150 in required hardware. But not long after the plan was introduced, customers discovered their speeds were throttled to as low as 1.5Mbps to discourage customers from excessively using the service.

Insiders tell us the likely cause of the plan’s demise is Sprint, the wireless company Karma contracts with to offer the service. Sprint reseller contracts are closely guarded, but there is a clear track record of wireless companies taking action against resellers that place unexpected burdens on their networks. Millenicom, a similar provider that won customers largely through word-of-mouth, saw its unlimited offerings curtailed long before Karma announced its Neverstop plan, because wireless companies didn’t appreciate the fact some Millenicom customers relied entirely on the service for Internet access in the home.

Karma sold a plan that encouraged heavier data usage and then punished customers for using it.

Karma officials claim most of their customers never exceeded 15GB a month, but apparently enough did to get Sprint’s attention. Karma’s own internal research found that despite its insistence Neverstop was not a home broadband replacement, at least 60% of their customers used it exactly for that purpose. A handful of customers ran up hundreds of gigabytes of usage from online video, cloud storage/backup, and file trading. But a larger percentage used the service because they had no access to DSL or cable broadband, and used about as much data as the average household – an amount deemed by Sprint and/or Karma as “unsustainable.” Karma quickly moved to impose universal speed reductions on the service, dropping from 5Mbps to 1.5Mbps in an effort to curtail usage.

“Bait and switch,” complained Shannon Krakosky on Karma’s Facebook page. Many of the company’s earliest customers found the throttles arrived just as their 45-day return window for the expensive equipment expired, saddling them with a $150 paperweight. The company’s Black Friday offer inspired still more customers to sign up at a discount, only to find the equipment backordered, arriving at around the same time the traffic reduction speed throttles were announced.

Just one week before the speed reductions took effect, new customers were enticed with a year-end signup offer, further increasing traffic loads. Then customers received this:

[We] were surprised to learn how many of you are also using it heavily at home. We’ve seen lots of you binge watch Netflix in HD all day, back up your hard drives over the internet, and even connect your Xboxes through ingenious means. It’s a glimpse of how the internet should be, and we love it… but it’s putting a strain on the service and it’s not what the product is meant for today.​

After spending $150 on hardware for $50 unlimited LTE service, less than four months later these are your new choices.

But usage should have never surprised Karma, considering the firm marketed Neverstop in November and December as the perfect answer for “heavier usage, streaming, downloading….”

Only after imposing a speed throttle — later increased to 2.5Mbps — came changes in how Neverstop marketed its service. In early January, Neverstop was now sold as the perfect solution for “daily usage, worry-free browsing, on-the-go work, travel, occasional streaming, and more.” Also gone was the marketing that promoted unlimited usage. The new message to customers: lay off.

Many customers were unhappy about the sudden changes and have filed false advertising complaints with the Better Business Bureau and several state attorneys general.

Karma continued to modify its Neverstop plan later in January, claiming to relent on speed throttling and moving to impose a 15GB usage cap on Neverstop instead. The company claimed the usage cap would allow it to restore 5Mbps service, but most customers complained their speeds remained slow. In effect, customers were being asked to continue paying $50 a month for a shadow of the service originally advertised.

As of late last week, Karma revisited customers again to announce the once unlimited wireless data experience of Neverstop was being stopped… permanently.

van Wel

Karma CEO Steven van Wel told Verge the company came to the realization that Neverstop was unsustainable after observing a month of customer usage following January’s adjustments. Even with the restrictive throttling, half of Neverstop customers reached the 15GB cap before the end of their billing cycle, and there was no way for them to easily continue high-speed service, whether by changing plans or paying overage fees. Just one month earlier van Wel told Verge only a few customers were likely to exceed their 15GB cap.

“You bait and switched us again,” came a chorus of complaints before Karma switched off public comments on all but its Facebook page.

“Poor business at best,” added Daniel Frisch. “Sell a customer one thing and then switch it to something completely different. You sold me an unlimited data device at a reasonable price and now you have gone from throttling that data to a high-priced limited data plan like everybody else.”

Karma’s latest plan is called Pulse and Neverstop customers will gradually find their existing Neverstop service transitioned to the new plan over the coming month, which will sell 5GB of service for $40 a month. Many complain there are better deals available elsewhere.

Stop the Cap! will continue to seek out options for rural or on-the-go customers who depend on wireless Internet access where DSL and cable broadband are not available. For now, we cannot recommend Karma because of the company’s unstable service plans and the high upfront cost of equipment.

You’ve been flee¢ed

It’s time for some more Big Cable Fairy Tales, brought to you by the well-paid lawyers, lobbyists, and lackey sock puppets paid to tell regulators life is only worth living when you approve a colossal merger.

Kids, gather round for tonight’s prescient story of vague promises and non-committal commitments.

Once upon a time in the forest there was a big, bad old Mr. Wolf (better known to his friends as TWC) that had a nasty habit occupying a nearby bridge to grandmother’s house and charged humongous fees to cross it. One of his best customers was Little Red Riding Hood, who depended on the no longer state of the art bridge to cut her travel time to grandmother’s house by 75%. Every trip proved an aggravation for our Red. It was costly, closed to traffic far more often than it should, and was policed by that pesky wolf and his “take it or leave it” attitude.

One Sunday in January, an angry crowd had gathered, reading a notice tacked to a nearby tree. In small print, it was titled, “Toll Reconsideration Notification.”

The notice explained increased bridge beautification and maintenance expenses necessitated an annual toll adjustment. But no worries, it would amount to about the cost of one jar of jam in Red’s basket.

“If you bought it at Whole Foods,” muttered Hood to your eminent narrator.

(Last year’s toll hike was “less than a box of cookies,” the year before that was “a tin of tea.” Three years ago it was the cost of Red’s basket. Next year, we think she would do better just handing over her purse.)

This year one trip across the bridge would cost $7.50. If you bought a wolf-approved, bundled picnic basket at the gift store while on your journey, it would drop that toll to $6. The wolf told complainers that was evidence most would never have to pay that new price, so the toll hike was minimal. But the people remained suspicious. (There were stories this wolf also had a tendency to occasionally feast on customers when nobody was looking, but his lawyers denied it.)

Despite the bridge toll inflation and John Walsh looking for missing travelers, our Red knew if she wanted to get to grandmother’s house this week, she had to use the bridge, nefarious wolf or not. The only other bridge – run by old man Frank Bison, fell into the river last winter and he doesn’t think it is worth spending a lot of money to build a new one. Despite offers to take customers across in his leaky canoe, most decide to pass.

Mr. Bison

Mr. Wolf made a handsome profit every quarter charging tolls to travelers. This fact did not escape the attention of the head of the Sheep Consortium in the next valley over. For years, the Consortium felt under-appreciated. Their adventures were rarely told, because few people cared. The wolf had a better story, and anyway it was hard to respect the sheep after they overspent on their watchdog operation and bankrupted themselves for a time.

“That was so yesterday,” defended Dr. Flee¢e, the head of the Consortium. “This is a new sunny day.”

Or so he claimed. Out of view, Flee¢e paced a nearby paddock night after night, unable to sleep knowing that damn wolf got all the attention and a heckuva lot more toll revenue than he was getting.

So one night, Dr. Flee¢e and his friends paid $10 million dollars to the Magic Sparkle Pony grazing down by the investment bank to find a win-win solution for both the sheep and the wolf (but mostly the sheep, shhh.) The pony looked up, tilted his head briefly, and said just one word: SYNERGY. A cacophony of gratitude rose from the valley and gosh darn it, exclaimed Dr. Flee¢e, wouldn’t you know the silly pony had the answer? A merger! The wolf’s costs would drop, the sheep would finally be able to tap into a big piece of that toll operation, and only by working together would Little Red Riding Hood get the benefits of their new relationship:

1. The ratty old bridge would be fully painted.
2. The wolf promised to go vegetarian for up to three years.
3. Little Red Riding Hood would be given a new basket (imported from Laos).

“Hey, wait a minute,” asked one of the sheep. “Didn’t the Three Little Pigs try this last year? They had more money than we do and some of them were turned into bacon after that surprising storm blew their house down.”

“But don’t you see the Magic Sparkle Pony solved that for us too?” responded another. “All we have to say is we’re not pigs and that counts for something. Besides, who doesn’t love sheep? This is going to work out fine.”

But there were still problems, especially with Ms. Hood and her fellow travelers.

It seems the Consortium didn’t promise Ms. Hood or anyone else would pay less on those trips to see grandma. They only promised the journey would be prettier and less confusing. Gone was the $7.50 toll, replaced with the all-new Flee¢ePa$$™ offering trips across the bridge bundled with: a 24/7 travel hotline, travel advice, books on travel, songs about travel, a coffee mug with a picture of Dr. Flee¢e traveling to his castle in Scotland, and the aforementioned Laotian wicker basket to cram it all into, for just $50 a month.

“Is this one of those Dr. Seuss tales that you have to be on something to appreciate?” asked Red. “I don’t drink coffee, nobody reads books anymore, and if I need travel advice I’ll ask someone I know. I don’t need all those things so why do I have to pay $50 instead of $5? Wait, who is paying for that castle?”

“Because it’s simpler, don’t you see,” said Dr. Flee¢e, eavesdropping in the corner. “We are going to be a different kind of bridge operator committed to creating jobs, offering the most innovative products and preserving this bridge.”

“For $50 a month,” coolly replied an exasperated Ms. Hood. “Stephen King wrote this, didn’t he? I have a better idea. We’re moving grandma to Chattanooga. They have high-speed rail.”

Press “1” for inconvenience.

At least half of the country would switch their cable, telephone, or satellite company in a matter of days after a bad customer service experience, if they could.

[24]7’s newly published 2016 Customer Engagement Index surveyed 3,500 customers globally, including 1,200 U.S. respondents, to understand what drives customer behaviors. The survey quickly identified cable and satellite providers among the worst offenders, and for good reason. Customer satisfaction scores for telecom companies continue to rest at the bottom of the barrel.

The survey found almost half were ready to bolt after a single bad experience dealing with customer service, whether it was with a dead-end interactive voice response menu that took them nowhere, to long hold times, to being asked the same questions over and over again as their call is transferred, to unresponsive customer service agents that never resolved the issue to a customer’s satisfaction.

Millennials increasingly prefer to work with self-service options and tolerate a ponderous experience with telephone-based customer service less. Having a website or app that can manage your account is well-appreciated by a growing number of customers that dread having to call anyone to resolve a problem.

“The way customers engage with brands has dramatically shifted, yet many enterprises’ approach to customer service and sales is stuck in yesterday’s paradigm,” [24]7 founder and CEO PV Kannan said in a statement. “For this reason, it’s more important than ever for brands to be where their customers are, and allow them to engage on their own terms. Companies that fail to prioritize the customer experience risk falling behind.”

Right now cable and satellite companies are failing a lot of their customers, scoring lowest with only a 59% customer satisfaction score. Internet providers only score marginally better at 63%.

Anger at poor service has led to 47% of consumers saying that they would take their business to a competitor within one day (if price and products are of equal value), while 79% say they would do it within one week. Millennials and GenX customers are less patient than Baby Boomers and those in the Greatest Generation.

Lucky for telecom companies many customers don’t have anywhere else to take their business. For most, finding a provider offering at least 25Mbps broadband that isn’t the cable company is impossible. Many phone companies don’t offer competing cable television and broadband is a problem if you subscribe to satellite TV. That may explain why many Comcast customers don’t believe the cable company is trying hard enough to improve customer service. They don’t have to.