Stop the Cap! reader Danielle spent last Monday night screaming at Comcast when she discovered the vast majority of cable channels she was paying for disappeared off the Dale City, Va. cable system after what she says was “no warning.”

“All I wanted to do was sit down and watch some television, and almost all of my channels were gone, replaced either with snowy nothing or a message telling me I had to upgrade to a set top box to receive the channel,” she writes.  “It was like Comcast conquered the world and took over almost every station.”

Danielle was left with just over a dozen channels, mostly local stations and channels dedicated to public access and her local government.

“Nobody told me they were doing this,” Danielle claims.  “The Comcast lady kept telling me it was on my bill but I don’t get a bill from them in the mail, so how should I know?”

The Comcast system in question, along with many others, has begun the progression to digital to conserve channel space, offer more services and networks, and increase broadband speed for customers.  But when Comcast converted so many channels to a digital platform all at once, it created the potential for chaos and confusion among subscribers.

The News & Messenger newspaper heard from their readers last Monday, and quickly noticed the dramatic change in Comcast’s lineup themselves in the newspaper break room.  Just 17 channels remained untouched after the digital conversion, but Comcast spokeswoman Alisha Martin made it clear customers shouldn’t get too comfortable watching them either.  Those 17 channels are scheduled to be switched to digital as well at a future undetermined date.

News & Messenger reader Stephanie Crenshaw, also in Dale City, was shocked to find her favorite stations gone, and she is an example of a subscriber that may be left in limbo by Comcast’s digital upgrade program.

Dale City, Va.

Comcast is offering impacted subscribers in Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park digital converters and set top boxes at no additional charge, at least for now, to help customers adjust to the changes.

But Crenshaw isn’t a Comcast subscriber — her homeowner’s association is, providing Comcast Cable to every home in the development, included in the homeowner association fee.  So far, Crenshaw cannot obtain the free equipment because she technically isn’t a recognized customer, and the homeowner’s association has yet to provide access either.

Our reader Danielle was in better shape after Comcast calmed her down.  Her level of service allowed her to get one digital set-top box and two digital adapters for free.  She now uses the set top box in her living room and the two digital-to-analog adapters on her televisions in the bedroom and kitchen.  But she wonders how long “free” will remain “free.”

“There is no guarantee I can find that says they cannot turn around and charge us for these later on,” Danielle complains.  “It also messes up my VCR — an excuse for Comcast to try and upgrade me to a set top DVR box I don’t want to spend that much on.”

“What really irritates me is the only mailings I get from Comcast lately are about their new electronic guide they are launching today — a guide I couldn’t get until I got their box, and one I don’t think I am ever going to use,” she says. “That and those cards trying to get me to cut over my phone line to them.  If the phone company treated me like Comcast, they would have turned off dial phone service on me and told me I had to buy a new push-button phone.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Residents peeved as Comcast removes scores of channels 6-21-11.flv[/flv]

A reporter at the News & Messenger flips through channels on the television in the newspaper’s break room and discovers there is very little left to see.  (1 minute)

Hawaiian Telcom on Friday won a 15-year non-exclusive franchise to develop and market cable television service on the island of Oahu.

The telephone company will be the first major competitor to Oceanic Cable in at least a decade, at least where HawTel plans to provide service.

“We are very pleased to have reached this important milestone in the development of our exciting new video service and will have more details to share about our plans in the next several weeks,” said spokeswoman Ann Nishida Fry.

Many HawTel-watchers predict the phone company will choose an IPTV platform over a hybrid fiber-copper network to support the service, much like AT&T’s U-verse.  HawTel plans a gradual rollout as neighborhoods are “upgraded” to support the service.

Oceanic Cable president Bob Barlow said he wasn’t too concerned with HawTel’s entry into the market.  He told the Hawaiian Star-Advertiser customers should not expect any dramatic savings or price cuts.

“Most of our customers don’t bundle services, and more than 60 percent of our video costs come from programming,” he said.

Barlow expects the fiercest level of competition will come from who delivers the best customer service.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KHON Honolulu Hawaiian Telcom to Offer Cable TV 6-24-11.mp4[/flv]

KHON-TV in Honolulu leads their newscast with HawTel’s approval for a cable television franchise on Oahu.  (2 minutes)

Here in western New York, the impact of more than two years of deep recession has delivered record high unemployment, wage freezes and cuts for many still holding onto middle class jobs.  Only now does it appear that the wage deep freeze is slowly coming to an end.

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle notes total wages earned in the nine-county Rochester/Finger Lakes region for the first nine months of the year were up 2.2 percent over the same period in 2009, according to state Labor Department figures.

But while things are incrementally improving for worker bees, many of America’s corporate “queen bee” executives have maintained compensation packages that would leave one to believe the United States is enjoying double digit growth and a blazing economy.

CEO pay at large U.S. companies has risen from 80 times as much as rank-and-file workers made in 1970 to more than 260 times what they made in 2009.

Stock market gains — the S&P 500 index rose almost 13 percent in 2010 — and improved profitability were key reasons why many executives made more last year than they had in 2009. Of the 86 executives on the Democrat and Chronicle list for both 2009 and 2010, compensation increased for 66.

Take Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt.  He spent much of June talking up raising broadband pricing on his company’s customers, many of whom live in upstate New York.  While Time Warner has faced challenging economic results in their core cable television business, one would never know it from Britt’s newest compensation package, handing him a 25 percent pay raise and another $2 million in his non-stock incentive pay.  That’s a pay package worth almost $10 million dollars.  The D&C notes four other Time Warner Cable executives listed in the company’s proxy statement made from $1.2 million to $3.8 million.

Rogers Communications claims usage caps are not creating problems for customers, but if and when they do, the company says it will get rid of them.

Luiza Staniec, manager of public relations for Rogers’ Quebec and Atlantic Canada region, made that remarkable claim in an interview with the New Brunswick-based Times & Transcript.

“At this point there is a cap. It hasn’t really caused a problem,” Staniec said.  “If the cap begins to affect users online, we will abolish it.”

At issue is Netflix’s popular streaming service, which opened for business in Canada last year.  Consumers are embracing the $7.99 service which delivers unlimited streaming of the Netflix online library.  But an increasing number of customers are discovering that while they can watch as much Netflix as they’d like, Internet Service Providers like Rogers have usage limits in place to keep online viewing under control.

Netflix told investors to expect $50 million in operating losses in international business this year, in part because growth in Canada is being hampered by stingy usage limits and high priced broadband.  Once consumers get a broadband bill with overlimit fees attached, some are reconsidering their love affair with video streaming.

Lindsey Pinto, communications representative for OpenMedia.ca, a consumer rights organization, says a regime of usage limits in place at most Canadian ISPs will ruin high bandwidth applications and services like Netflix, as consumers find them too expensive to use.

“It takes a lot of bandwidth to stream a movie or watch Netflix,” Pinto told the newspaper. “People will stop doing things that will bring them over the cap. There will be a disintegration from these services under this model.”

Staniec counters that Rogers offers higher usage cap plans (for more money) to accommodate Netflix viewing.

“If you watch a lot of movies, pick the package with the highest cap,” she says. “If you don’t watch too many, you don’t need the high cap.”

She added Rogers is willing to be flexible, adjusting caps “to suit the consumers.”

But last summer Rogers actually reduced the usage cap of its popular Extreme service plan from 95GB to just 80GB per month, one day after Netflix announced plans to enter Canada.

[Updated 5:12pm EDT — We heard from Ms. Staniec who wants readers to know she was respectfully misquoted by the reporter at the Times & Transcript:

“The correct message I conveyed was that our offer will evolve as customers needs/use evolves. The journalist added, ‘perhaps one day they will be abolished altogether.'”

Staniec would like our readers to know she herself made no statement about the issue of abolishing usage caps.]

Phillip Dampier

While North American ISP’s call 3Mbps DSL “revolutionary” for rural America and dream of Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing everywhere else, Australia is poised to take broadband to a level North America can only imagine.  Watch this documentary on Australia’s fiber-based National Broadband Network future and how it will transform their economy and culture, and then ponder what your Internet Service Provider is doing these days.

While we scratch our heads wondering how to wire West Virginia for slow speed DSL, Australia is planning to rip out copper wire networks everywhere.  While we fight over communities trying to get their citizens 21st century broadband speeds from community-owned providers private companies want to ban, Australia will deliver the same fiber speeds to 90 percent of the country, whether it’s ‘economically viable’ (to investors) or not.  As we watch a handful of giant telecom companies try to mess with broadband pricing to further increase their profits without delivering any improvements in service, Australia is going to rid itself of artificial limits on broadband usage.

But Australia’s NBN goes much farther than just delivering fast broadband.  It builds a foundation to transform virtually every aspect of Australian life:

• Rural Australia’s economic viability is guaranteed a future with the availability of fast and reliable broadband for businesses large and small;
• Telemedicine means patients seeking routine care and follow-ups can conduct them from the comfort of their own homes;
• Telecommuting means less energy consumption, less traffic, and reduced costs in roadway maintenance as workers do their jobs away from the office without wasting precious time in traffic;
• Telelearning provides rural students with access to the same high quality education city students receive, and ongoing education can be managed anytime, anywhere, even for those with existing jobs and families;
• Australian businesses can reach new customers across the world, increasing sales, whether they sell a digital product or one that leverages online shipping and tracking tools to complete delivery anywhere;
• Millions of Australians will have access to the same high speed broadband, delivering a platform for the development of large-scale, next generation applications that don’t make sense in countries where broadband is a patchwork of speeds, service, and basic availability.
• It means a broadband network so far advanced above that found across North America, it could change Australia’s standing in global commerce, and impact our own.

Embarrassed yet?  Worried about America and Canada becoming broadband followers instead of leaders?

You should be.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Australia’s NBN June 2011.flv[/flv]

Australia’s National Broadband Network  (38 minutes)