Nevermind. We'll resell Sprint instead.

Back in January 2010, Cox Cable announced it was getting into the cell phone business with an ambitious plan to construct its own competing wireless network.  Cox used their little spacemen to market their forthcoming alternative as delivering “unbelievably fair” pricing and terms for cell phone service.  The bigger players were selling bait and switch plans with high extra charges and bill shock at the end of the month, or so Cox’s ads suggested.

Now, the cable company has announced it is pulling the plug on its partially constructed 3G network, and will rely exclusively on reselling Sprint service.

“We believe this approach is good for our customers, allowing us to take the necessary steps to fulfill our promise to deliver a Cox experience that customers expect from us,” read a statement from Cox.

What happens to Cox’s existing infrastructure, and the frequencies it won at auction in 2008, is unknown.

Although the reasons for the change of heart are not officially known, there is speculation in the investment community Cox’s expensive launch of 3G technology would be outdated just as larger providers were unveiling newer 4G networks.  Additionally, the dynamics of the market are increasingly trending towards a duopoly, especially after AT&T announced its intentions to acquire T-Mobile.

Two major carriers will provide service to the vast majority of Americans if the merger is approved.  That would leave Cox in a difficult position attracting investment to build its own network and interest from consumers looking for the latest and greatest smartphones Cox couldn’t sell.

Sprint’s wholesale division has allowed several providers to resell Sprint’s network, no capital investments required.  Cox had already been relying on Sprint for providing cell phone service in several markets.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Cox Wireless Advertising Campaign.flv[/flv]

Cox Wireless’ marketing campaign promised “unbelievably fair” pricing on its own wireless network.  Now it will resell Sprint’s network instead. (2 minutes)

Unlimiting the ways a cell phone company can limit your service.

MetroPCS pitches its 4G/LTE plans to customers looking to save money over the bigger players in the marketplace.  The upstart provider, based in Richardson, Texas, serves just over a dozen major metropolitan areas with no-contract plans that deliver lower prices in return for smaller coverage areas.  As larger providers heavily sell their “next generation 4G” networks, MetroPCS has also been promoting their own “unlimited talk, text, and web” 4G/LTE plan that offers an “unlimited” experience for $60 a month.  But there is a catch, only revealed when customers click the fine print link that opens the Terms of Use.  The document is a poster child for Net Neutrality, because it allows the company to block, throttle, prioritize, alter, or inspect any web content.

Here is what MetroPCS advertises:

Here is a selection of the Terms and Conditions which tarnish a great sounding deal (underlining ours):

You acknowledge and agree that the Internet contains Data Content which, without alteration, will or may not be available, or may not be providable to you in a way to allow a meaningful experience, on a wireless handset.

You acknowledge and agree that such alteration that MetroPCS may or will perform on your behalf as your agent may include our use of Data Content traffic management or shaping techniques such as, but not limited to delaying or controlling the speeds at which Data Content is delivered, reformatting the Data Content, compressing the Data Content, prioritizing traffic on MetroPCS’ network, and placing restrictions on the amount of Data Content made available based on the Agreement. You further acknowledge that MetroPCS may not be able to alter such Data Content for you merely by reference to the Internet address and therefore acknowledge and agree that MetroPCS may examine, including, but not limited to Shallow (or Stateful) Packet Inspection and Deep Packet Inspection, the Data Content requested by you while using the MetroWEB Service to determine how best to alter such Data Content prior to providing it to you.

If we notice excessive data traffic coming from your phone, we reserve the right to suspend, reduce the speed of, or terminate your MetroWEB Service. In addition, to provide a good experience for the majority of our customers and minimize capacity issues and degradation in network performance, we may take measures including temporarily reducing data throughput for a subset of customers who use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth; if your web and data Service Plan usage is predominantly off-portal or otherwise not provided by MetroPCS during a billing cycle, we may reduce your data speed, without notice, for the remainder of that billing cycle. We may also suspend, terminate, or restrict your data session, or MetroWEB Service if you use MetroWEB Service in a manner that interferes with other customers’ service, our ability to allocate network capacity among customers, or that otherwise may degrade service quality for other customers.

MetroPCS also wants customers to know their service is not intended as a home broadband replacement, and states it is only to be used for basic web services, including e-mail and web browsing and downloading of legitimate audio content.  Video streaming is naughty.

[flv width=”596″ height=”356″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NBC ATT Internet Overcharging 5-24-11.flv[/flv]

A new consumer investigation by NBC’s Today Show found that AT&T may be systematically overcharging customers for their broadband usage, fleecing customers for countless sums in overlimit fees.  With no government oversight to guarantee usage measurements are accurate and fairly measure usage, customers have to take AT&T’s “word” for the accuracy of their billing, and now that the company has extended Internet Overcharging to its DSL and U-verse customers, AT&T could earn millions in ill-gotten gains if the claims of overestimated usage are true.  AT&T responded, claiming consumers have a misunderstanding of how data is consumed and billed.  NBC quotes AT&T as saying most customers who exceed their limits do not incur fees, which will come as quite a surprise to customers who are routinely billed $15 or more for excessive use charges on wireless plans.  Thanks to Stop the Cap! reader Scott for sharing the news.  (4 minutes)

Stop the Cap! reader Cal believes AT&T cannot be reasoned with about Internet Overcharging until you threaten to cancel.

While a significant number of customers have already pulled the plug on AT&T DSL and U-verse service over their recently-introduced Internet Overcharging schemes, some are telling Stop the Cap! they have no plans to actually disconnect service until AT&T threatens to charge them overlimit fees.

For some AT&T customers, there is no suitable alternative to the phone company.  Rural customers without a cable provider, or those who are faced with two bad choices — AT&T or Charter Communications — say they are going to test AT&T’s resolve to actually overbill them.

Cal is an AT&T customer is Missouri.  His alternative?  Charter Cable, which has an Internet Overcharging scheme of its own and delivers what he calls “third world service” in his community.  Given a choice, he intends to stay with AT&T as long as possible, pulling the plug only after his third warning of exceeding the phone company’s new broadband usage limits.  He thinks AT&T’s customer service won’t ultimately let it come to that.

“My sister works for an AT&T call center where she lives, and there was some training on the subject of handling the company’s usage caps,” Cal reports. “Get the right representative or supervisor and they can make virtually anything go away with a few keystrokes, especially if you are prepared to cancel your service over the issue.  While they may not cancel the caps, they very well may credit back any overcharges.”

Cal says his family does not intend to change their usage habits one bit.  He’ll change providers before he rations his Internet usage.

“I maintain control over our Internet access here, they don’t and sure as hell won’t,” he said.  “We do not do illegal downloads and we don’t allow torrenting or anything else that can get my kids into trouble, but we do use a Roku box and watch Netflix instead of buying pay movie channels with programming not suitable for my family to watch.”

Cal says his five children are home-schooled, which makes daily Internet access an essential part of the education process.  Many companies that provide home-schooling materials increasingly require a broadband connection.  While not as bandwidth hungry as Netflix video streaming, with five children in the home, usage adds up fast.

“It is not hard to do 260GB of usage a month, which puts us just over their U-verse limit, and I’ll be damned if I am going to pay AT&T another $10 for 10GB over,” Cal says.  “This is another reason why the Obama Administration is no better than the last one — they are all masters of big corporations who will rob us blind and use the money to pay off Congress to look the other way.”

Cal used to be a Charter Cable customer, but left when that company implemented its own Internet Overcharging scheme.

“I told Charter with their lousy service they were lucky I was a customer, but after putting usage limits on, I left,” he reports.

Cal’s neighbor thinks he has an even better way to battle AT&T.

“My neighbor will cancel service under his name and sign up under his wife’s and bounce between them whenever AT&T threatens to send him a bigger bill; he has already been doing that for years back and forth between AT&T and Charter on new customer deals,” Cal says.

Cal, and many other readers touching base with us, believe AT&T is not very responsive to customer complaints unless customers threaten to cancel service, and they believe AT&T will only change its mind when shareholders see the usage limits as counterproductive.

“AT&T can buy enough people in Washington to make street protests irrelevant, but their shareholders sure won’t like it when they see customers and revenue dropping,” Cal notes.  “If you can’t get cable, you are stuck with AT&T, so you have to keep the pressure on — file complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the FCC, and Congress.  Make them spend more money defending their policy than they earn from its proceeds.”

Phillip Dampier

Time Warner Cable has completed their DOCSIS 3 upgrade of the Rochester/Finger Lakes region and their new Road Runner Extreme and Wideband services should now be available throughout the region.  Stop the Cap! HQ will receive its upgrade to Road Runner Extreme late this afternoon, primarily for the 5Mbps upstream speed, which will make uploading content to our servers much easier and more efficient.

The cable company is insistent on their installation fee, which amounts to nearly $68 (unjustified in my personal opinion).  Some details for our local readers:

• Customers in the Rochester & Finger Lakes region almost never own their own cable modems — they are provided with Road Runner at no extra charge;
• Upgrading to Extreme or Wideband will mean either a modem swap or a second piece of equipment if you have Time Warner phone service.  The new equipment includes a built-in wireless router;
• You are not obligated to use the cable company’s equipment as your primary router if you favor using your own existing router;
• As part of the installation fee, you have a right to insist they spend the time to configure service the way you want it, especially if you want to continue using your own router;
• It is also a good time to ask them to check signal levels and clean up any wiring or service issues.  Western New York has endured a record-breaking deluge of rain this spring, and degraded outdoor wiring can create havoc for broadband and cable service.
• If you are currently receiving a promotion such as free or discounted Road Runner Turbo service, you will lose the value of that promotion when you upgrade service and will pay full price going forward.

Beyond the installation fee, Road Runner Extreme (30/5Mbps) costs $20 more than Road Runner Standard (10/1Mbps) service.  Road Runner Wideband (50/5Mbps) is priced at $99 a month, but is a much better value bundled with the cable company’s Signature Home ($199) package, which includes complete packages of digital cable, “digital phone,” and broadband service.  For most in the Rochester/Finger Lakes area, the only alternative is Frontier Communications’ DSL combined with an unlimited calling plan and satellite television or a similar package from Verizon or much smaller Windstream.  Verizon’s fiber to the home service FiOS is not available anywhere in this region.