Comcast's touch control panel delivers alarm functions, home automation, and even weather updates.

Verizon Communications, Bright House Networks, Comcast/Xfinity, and Time Warner Cable are all on the verge of making a major new push to get customers to consider signing up for home security through their respective bundled offerings.  It’s just the latest new way telecommunications companies are responding to Wall Street’s insatiable quest for growth in the average revenue earned from each customer.  But how good are these services, and how much are they going to cost?

Time Warner Cable has offered security monitoring in a number of legacy markets inherited from their former owners.  But now the company is beta testing an entirely new suite of home security applications in cities like Rochester, N.Y., with the hope of introducing the service later this year in additional markets.

Time Warner Cable and Bright House seem to be jointly testing a similar system, designed to compete with 24/7 home alarm monitoring providers like ADT or GE Home Security.  Although price points have not yet been announced, Stop the Cap! has learned the cable company intends to test a basic package of home monitoring including a limited number of monitored doors and windows for between $25-30 a month, not including upfront costs and installation.

Like other alarm providers, additional services and protected points of entry will cost extra.  The next generation of home security from Time Warner Cable will be controllable from apps for iPad and smartphones, in addition to a touchscreen control panel supplied with the system.  By integrating the system with your home broadband connection, you can stream video from security webcams and configure alerts for any number of events.

Bright House’s proposed system, for example, would let you set a text message alert when the kids got home from school.  Want to know if someone sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night?  The security system can alert you to that as well.

Comcast/Xfinity has been rolling out a similar system in some of their markets. XFINITY^® Home Security also delivers monitoring services, and provides remote access over the Internet.  It will also let you remotely control home appliances, lighting, and any installed web cameras.  Away from home and want to see if your spouse is up to no good?  Now you can quietly spy on anyone in your home while you are away.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Home Security.flv[/flv]

XFINITY Home Security System from Comcast is explained in this promotional video from Comcast.  (3 minutes)

Comcast’s basic monitoring package doesn’t include many of the coolest add-ons like video monitoring and access to a modern touch-based control panel that also serves up weather forecasts and even sports scores.  Many customers end up with the “Preferred Package” because it delivers a much wider range of protective services.  The service tested successfully in Houston and is now also available in Philadelphia, Portland, Jacksonville, Sarasota/Naples, Chattanooga and Nashville.

Comcast didn’t reinvent the wheel with their security system.  They rebranded iControl Networks’ Open Home automation and security platform.  Pricing?  $199 for the “basic package” that didn’t impress us, or $299 for the “preferred” package which comes with the bells and whistles.  Installation is sometimes included in those prices, but a $50 “activation fee” also applies.  Expect to pay $30 for basic monitoring, $40 for “preferred” monitoring each month for a minimum of three years — an early termination fee applies if you cancel early.  Also expect to pay more for any optional extras you add.

Verizon's alarm system was promoted at this year's Consumers Electronics Show.

Verizon Communications’ new ominously-named “Home Monitoring and Control” system is powered by its fiber to the home FiOS service.  Introduced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Verizon has teamed up with lock-maker Schlage, who manufactures the “smart door locks,” and Motorola, which throws in 4Home, their home automation platform.  Trane even includes a smart-thermostat, remotely controllable.

Unlike systems sold by cable competitors, Verizon’s is budget-minded, priced at just $9.99 per month.  But the system package at that price is not remotely monitored and was designed to be sold to the do-it-yourself type. For ten bucks, you get to control everything through your television set top box, smartphone, or tablet computer.  If you want more, you pay more.  An upgraded package includes remote door locking/unlocking and remote controllable webcams that you can pan and zoom.

The deluxe package throws in the remote monitoring service and a smart-home energy use suite that let’s you monitor and control energy consumption of your home appliances.

“The more services they can get someone to sign up for, the stickier that customer is to them,” said Bill Ablondi, director of home systems research for the Parks Associates market research firm.

Most systems will come with a term contract of 12-36 months, and many could fetch discounts for heavily-bundled customers.  Most insurance companies also provide up to a 15 percent discount on homeowner policies for remotely monitored burglar and fire detection systems.

For the cable and phone companies, home security could easily bring another $40 a month in revenue and put many cable bills north of $200 a month in combined services.  Since virtually all of the systems were developed by third parties, development costs are low, and since existing broadband service in most homes provides ready connectivity to an alarm monitoring center, the costs to provide the service are minimal.

For existing security companies, the pending threat of big cable and phone companies eating their business for breakfast isn’t one they are taking lying down.

ADT is developing its own suite of home automation and security monitoring, and didn’t waste anytime taking a swipe at the cable companies.

“We’ve been in this business for 135 years,” said ADT spokesman Bob Tucker, starting with telegraphs and personal security. As for Bright House and Verizon, he said, “Would you really want to trust the security of your home and family to the same people that install HBO?”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon Makes a Connected Home a Reality.flv[/flv]

Verizon’s forthcoming home security and automation system is promoted in this company-supplied video.  (1 minute)

Cable Montana is now Optimum West, Cablevision’s marketing name for the cable systems it acquired from Bresnan Communications.

Earlier today, customers in Billings, Laurel, Park City and Columbus were able to start using upgraded cable, phone, and broadband equipment on the updated cable system.  More than 2,200 Montanans were introduced to the Optimum name in a mailing sent to neighborhoods where service has been upgraded.  But all of the new equipment that comes with the service has created considerable confusion for long-standing Bresnan customers who have been using older Bresnan equipment for years.

The changes have been overwhelming for those used to Bresnan’s modest level of service for more than a decade.  Cablevision, best known for its Optimum service in suburban New York City, Connecticut, and New Jersey, has brought an enormous increase in programming, and improvements in broadband service, for many customers.

“All existing customers in Laurel, Park City and Columbus will be upgraded to Optimum TV by July 20, which will deliver many more channels, including access to more than 100 channels of free HD (high definition), thousands of titles of video on demand and other benefits like faster high-speed Internet and a better phone service with lower prices and more features than are available from any other provider,” says a Cablevision spokesperson.

When it works properly.

The Laurel Outlook reports some customers frustrated with the changeover have found themselves at local cable stores trying to sort out all the problems:

One Laurel customer installed his modem, but was not receiving service. A visit to the Laurel office did not provide answers to his satisfaction, so he drove to the Billings office on Monad Road, where he received two telephone numbers to call for tech support. He called one of the numbers, followed a menu, and was able to troubleshoot with a technician to get his Internet up and running.

A second customer installed her set-top box but was not receiving Optimum TV channels. She called the 1-800 number provided in the mailing packet, but technicians were unable to walk her through the necessary steps to receive service. Frustrated, she drove to the Laurel walk-in center on West First Street and made an appointment for a technician to come to her home. She discovered that not only must she program her television with the new Optimum channel numbers, she must also program the TV-top box with the correct numbers. After doing so, she was able to receive the new channels.

Many customers are likely going to need to reprogram their televisions more than once.  When the upgrades are complete, Cablevision says it plans to unify channel lineups across the area.

A Boston firm believes broadband is something best shared, and plans to put that notion to the test by bringing free access to wireless broadband to anyone in range of its equipment.

NetBlazr starts with gigabit fiber from Cogent Communications, and then delivers free or low-cost access to any customer that is willing to do two things:

1. Spend $299 for their basic installation kit, which includes a high speed router, three antennas, and some cabling;
2. Use the included equipment to receive service from NetBlazr and agree to share it with anyone in range of the wireless antennas included in the kit.

Reception of the wireless broadband signal, comparable to Business Class DSL, comes with no ongoing fees.  If you want dedicated, guaranteed speeds, NetBlazr will sell them to you at an added cost.  The more customers exchanging signals, the more robust and faster the network becomes, says NetBlazr CEO Jim Hanley.

Although the service is currently designed to operate for business customers in downtown Boston, Hanley sees the possibility of crowdsourcing a broadband platform eventually large enough to cover residential homes and businesses across the country, at almost no expense.

The venture is new, however, and the company’s FAQ warns businesses not to depend entirely on NetBlazr for dependable broadband just yet.

Because it’s still new, the quality and level of service is highly dependent on what kind of signal one can receive from the next nearest business that belongs to the cooperative.  If you are the only one for blocks around, the signal could be marginal to non-existent.

Such communal networks only work when they reach a critical mass of cooperative members to blanket areas with coverage.  At the moment, that means Boston’s Back Bay and downtown, where high-rise buildings help get the signals around densely populated neighborhoods.

NetBlazr’s marketing brochure touts the service can deliver symmetrical speeds up to 60Mbps for free, and is particularly suited to offices that need additional broadband resources, but don’t want to sign a pricey upgrade agreement with incumbent providers like Verizon.

NetBlazr’s competitors like the aforementioned phone company are reacting with a shrug of the shoulders so far.

Verizon spokesman Phil Santoro: “Competition is always healthy and the market for Internet service is already highly competitive.”

“We aren’t familiar with this company’s business proposition, but I can tell you that Comcast already offers secure and reliable high speed Internet,” spokesman Marc Goodman told the Boston Herald.

Earlier efforts to share Internet services in neighborhoods through Wi-Fi ran into trouble when Internet Service Providers found out.  Virtually all providers specifically prohibit customers from sharing their residential service with non-paying customers beyond the property line.  But since NetBlazr arranges for its own access, this stumbling block is overcome.

Company officials say they have enough connectivity to support the demand, although business users don’t traditionally pound networks with peer-to-peer file requests or lots of online video, so how NetBlazr will ultimately perform in a residential setting remains to be seen.

The company has impressed technology mavens at the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange.  NetBlazr won this year’s “Best Bootstrapped Start-up” award.  It was also a finalist for the $1 million MassChallenge competition held earlier this year.

Hanley’s ultimate goal is to provide cheap, commodity Internet access, and thinks within five years his idea will be a major game-changer for how broadband service is delivered in the United States.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NetBlazr.flv[/flv]

netBlazr CEO Jim Hanley indicts America’s broadband duopoly and says direct action through new competition will solve the problem faster than public policy can.  Hanley also explains how his service works. (10 minutes)

Meigs County, Ohio

Connect Ohio, one of the many state chapters working with telecommunications industry-backed Connected Nation, has released its 2011 Technology Assessment about how the state is adopting broadband technology.

Despite celebrating improvements, large parts of rural Ohio still do not receive any kind of broadband service, especially from the state’s dominant provider AT&T, one of the companies that has traditionally backed Connected Nation.

The friendly relations these broadband groups maintain with their sponsors results in reports that strenuously avoid any direct criticism of providers for ignoring rural Ohio, particularly in the southeastern part of the state where broadband is especially difficult to obtain.

Connect Ohio’s findings, mostly provided by voluntary data from Internet Service Providers and respondents to various surveys, downplays rural Ohio’s broadband drought:

Statewide, 5% of Ohio residents report that broadband is not available where they live, 85% say with certainty that broadband is available, and 10% do not know whether broadband service is available.  By comparison, Connect Ohio’s provider-validated Broadband Service Inventory found that 1.7% of households do not have terrestrial fixed broadband service access.

The disparity in Connect Ohio’s numbers is especially apparent in rural Meigs County, located in southeastern Ohio.

“Geographically speaking, nearly two-thirds of Meigs County does not have easy access to affordable broadband,” Meigs County Economic Development Director Perry Varnadoe told The Daily Sentinel. “In terms of infrastructure, access to broadband is just as important as water and sewer service to businesses.”

Varnadoe thinks the few major providers that do offer service in the county are basically done expanding their service areas, and Varnadoe believes broadband adoption has reached a ceiling in Meigs County.

With much of the county bypassed for DSL or cable modem service, the only exception to this is fixed wireless service from New Era Broadband.  Unfortunately, it’s a costly alternative to traditional DSL.

New Era Broadband of Coolville is a Wireless ISP

New Era delivers up to 1.5Mbps service for $60 a month with a $200 installation fee and a two-year service agreement, and provides service in the vicinity of the community of Racine.

The company is still waiting on a $2.9 million grant to expand service to an additional 3,000 residents, mostly in the area of Five Points, which only has access to dial-up Internet.

Only about half the residents of Belmont, Jefferson, Monroe and Harrison counties have broadband connections at home, the study also found.  The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register placed most of the blame for that on residents not being particularly interested in the Internet, but service and cost are likely more important factors, as cable and DSL service is also spotty in those counties as well.  If there is a computer in the home, there is a demand for broadband service, especially in households where children find Internet access increasingly important to complete study work.

For most residents, it has become a waiting game to see who will deliver access, if anyone will.  In most of Ohio, customers look to the phone or cable company for access.  Rural Ohio lacks good cable broadband coverage, and DSL from the phone company first requires an interest in providing the service, and AT&T has not proven to be aggressive in rural communities in the state.

In fact, the phone company has been seeking approval to discontinue providing rural landline service at a time and date of its choosing.  If the landline goes, the chance for wired DSL goes with it.

Phillip "No Data Tsunami Over Here" Dampier

As the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission enters into the second week of hearings on Internet Overcharging, there have really only been a few minor surprises.

First, and most importantly, when voting consumers pay attention, regulators start asking questions and get aggressive.  This is the same commission that only a year ago gave the green light to wholesale usage-based billing (UBB) — a practice that would guarantee every ISP in Canada dropped flat rate Internet service.  After a half-million Canadians signed Openmedia.ca’s petition opposing UBB, the Harper government (and the opposition parties) got interested, and the Commission got an earful from Industry Minister Tony Clement, who was simply appalled at this kind of Internet pricing.

Second, this round of CRTC hearings has found Bell — UBB’s biggest proponent — largely unrepentant.  It still supports charging people for their usage, even as the company’s foundation for that premise — bandwidth congestion — erodes away.  Providers can claim anything they like, but they cannot invent facts.  By Friday, most of the commissioners realized what consumer advocates had been saying all along — there is no great bandwidth crisis in Canada.  No data tsunami. No exaflood in the zettabyte era.  Growth is exponential to be sure, and Canadians have a passionate affair with their Internet connectivity, but one that remains easily managed when providers make regular, affordable investments in upgrading their networks.

Bell’s week-long contention that congestion pricing was paramount to managing Canada’s bandwidth finally fell apart when CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein noted Bell’s trinity of regional entities managed Internet usage completely differently, even though the traffic passed through the exact same network:

• 1) Bell Aliant, which provides service in the Atlantic provinces, has no usage caps at all.
• 2) Bell Quebec provides service with a considerably more generous usage allowance than given to those customers in Ontario, even those just on the other side of the border.
• 3) Bell Ontario’s usage cap is downright stingy compared with Quebec, most likely because it competes in Ontario with an equally stingy provider — Rogers Cable.

With these facts in evidence, Bell was finally forced to concede it was “competition” not “congestion” that brought three different treatments of Internet usage.  So much for “network congestion.”

Bell’s competitors also hung the telecom giant out to dry when it was their turn to testify.  Each in turn would claim that congestion presented no problems for their respective networks.  Telus, Rogers and Shaw all denied they shared Bell’s usage problems.  That is not to say any of them were in favor of restoring flat-rate Internet access.

Instead, they argued, UBB represented a combination of “stimulating investment” in broadband networks (already insanely profitable for all-comers) and “peak usage pricing,” a hybridized argument about congestion during peak usage periods.  Since some wholesale broadband services are priced at peak capacity requirements, some argue UBB helps keep that peak usage manageable during prime time.

Unfortunately, the peak usage pricing argument undermines itself because Canadian providers enforce usage limits 24/7, not only during peak usage periods.  This means there is no incentive for users to offload their heaviest usage to times when the network experiences low demand.  Independent providers continue to argue “peak usage pricing” may be defensible in certain circumstances, but it’s not even a possibility under Bell’s proposed wholesale UBB scheme.

The record being constructed from Canada’s hearings have direct implications for Americans, as the basic business models for cable and phone providers are similar in both countries.  The death rattle of the “congestion” myth is good news for North American broadband users who have long rolled their eyes at hysterical arguments about data floods and capacity crises.

The CRTC still needs to hear from some additional speakers, and we are under no illusion they will completely reverse themselves on Internet Overcharging schemes, but this represents a clear-cut case that consumers need not simply sit back and take abusive pricing.  Consumer activism can make a real difference in the broadband policies of both the United States and Canada.  It takes a concerted effort, but once a critical mass of consumers is achieved, the ability for providers to simply do as they please becomes a virtual impossibility.

That’s good news for all of us.

[flv width=”640″ height=”368″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC UBB 7-11-11.flv[/flv]

CBC News covers the start of the CRTC hearings and what UBB pricing is doing to Canada’s Internet experience.  (2 minutes)