Comcast is now giving Xfinity Mobile customers access to Verizon’s 5G network, if a customer owns a suitable 5G-capable device and is willing to pay more in certain cases.

“From day one, Xfinity Mobile has been proud to be the only provider to empower customers to design a mobile plan that fits their needs, as well as have the flexibility to seamlessly switch between unlimited or per gig to save money,” said Rui Costa, Comcast’s senior vice president of innovation and customer value propositions. “We’re excited to now extend that benefit with 5G data plans.”

Comcast has diverged from Charter Communications, which has been offering access to Verizon’s 5G network to Spectrum Mobile customers since March. Xfinity Mobile customers paying “by the gig” or subscribed to unlimited service will both have access to 5G service. In contrast, Spectrum Mobile customers must have an unlimited plan to access 5G.

Existing Xfinity Mobile customers will need to opt in to 5G service through the Xfinity Mobile app, which will also raise your rates from $12/GB to $15/GB. If you don’t want 5G access and prefer paying $12 per gigabyte as you have all along, do not opt in to the new plan:

Xfinity Mobile Pricing (Effective May 18, 2020)

• Discontinued By the Gig 4G-LTE: $12 per gigabyte (includes unlimited voice and texting)
• New By the Gig 5G/4G-LTE: $15 per gigabyte (includes unlimited voice and texting)
• Unlimited 5G/4G-LTE: $45 per month (includes unlimited voice and texting)

Comcast and Charter’s wireless offerings have seen substantial subscriber gains as customers discover they can access Verizon Wireless’ extensive network and pay substantially lower prices as well. Verizon’s own customers will eventually face a $10 surcharge per month for access to 5G.

Is Xfinity’s 5G “By the Gig” plan worth an extra $3 per gigabyte? Only if you live in one of 35 U.S. cities where Verizon offers millimeter wave 5G service in select neighborhoods. Verizon’s current 5G network is extremely limited, with most living and working outside of a Verizon 5G coverage area. That could mean upgrading to Xfinity’s 5G plan will only result in paying more money for the same level of service you already had.

Spectrum internet customers in parts of Central Florida and South Texas are getting twice the download speed they used to receive thanks to a series of quiet service upgrades still in progress.

Customers in parts of suburban Orlando, including Seminole County, first noticed the speed upgrade in April in towns like Lake Mary. Parts of Kissimmee saw a service upgrade earlier this month. Some neighborhoods in Orlando also began reporting speed upgrades as of mid-May. Some parts of Pasco County, north of Tampa, also received a 200 Mbps upgrade, particularly in planned communities.

Charter Communications is gradually upgrading capacity in the area, formerly served by Bright House Networks. Spectrum traditionally does not announce speed upgrades until an entire service area is complete, which will likely happen in parts of Florida and Texas by early this summer.

In South Texas, San Benito is one of the communities between Brownsville and McAllen seeing Spectrum’s usual download speed doubled from 100 to 200 Mbps.

The speed upgrades come without any additional charges and usually appear automatically. Spectrum has been slowly upgrading its national service footprint to offer the new, higher-speed 200 Mbps Standard service tier. For more than two years, customers in many AT&T landline areas in the midwest and south have had 200/10 Mbps service, designed to help keep the cable company competitive with AT&T’s fiber offering. But service remains stubbornly fixed at 100/10 Mbps in just under half of Spectrum’s service area, particularly in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and West regions.

Stop the Cap! expects Spectrum to upgrade all of its service areas to provide 200/10 Mbps service. It remains uncertain exactly when that will happen, however.

One of America’s internet service providers managed to achieve a customer satisfaction score of 94%, an unprecedented vote of approval from consumers that typically loathe their cable or phone company.

What also makes this provider different is that it is owned by the public, and administered by the City of Fairlawn, Ohio. Fairlawn is a suburb of Akron, with a population of around 7,400 people. Akron is dominated by Charter Spectrum for cable and AT&T for telephone service. But the suburbs have been underserved by both companies for decades. As with many northeastern cities, the economic shift away from manufacturing towards high-tech businesses requires robust connectivity. But many communities are stuck with a cable company that will not service less populated areas in town and a phone company that is willing to leave many customers with low-speed DSL and nothing better.

When a community finds it cannot get gigabit fiber optic service for residents, it can either live with what is on offer instead or decide to do something about it. Fairlawn decided it was time to establish FairlawnGig, a municipal broadband utility that would provide gigabit fiber service to every resident in town, if they wanted it.

Broadband Communities reports local residents love the service they are getting:

The online survey results reveal overall satisfaction with FairlawnGig at an astoundingly high number of 94% with more than 3 out of 4 (77%) saying they are “very satisfied.”

Additionally, FairlawnGig 94% of residential customers rated the service they receive from FairlawnGig as “excellent” or “very good.”

FairlawnGig offers two plans to residents: 300/300 Mbps service for $55 a month or 1,000/1,000 Mbps service for $75. Landline phone service is an extra $25 a month, and the municipal provider has pointed its customers to online cable TV alternatives like Hulu and YouTube TV for television service. Incumbent cable and phone companies usually respond to this kind of competition with cut-rate promotions to keep the customers they have and lure others back. Spectrum has countered with promotions offering 400 Mbps internet for as little as $30/mo for two years. Despite the potential savings, most people in Fairlawn won’t go back to Spectrum regardless of the price. FairlawnGig’s loyalty score is 80, with 85% of those not only sticking with FairlawnGig but also actively recommending it to others.

Residents appreciate the service, deemed very reliable, and that technicians are local and accessible. The City says it works hard to ensure that customer appointments are kept and on time and representatives are available to assist customers with their questions and technical support needs. FairlawnGig claims its technicians spend extra time teaching customers about their services.

City officials candidly admit they were willing to build and launch the municipal fiber service even if it did not recoup its original investment for years to come. That is because the municipal fiber network has benefited the city in other ways:

• It has attracted new residents to town and kept them there.
• Several businesses launched or moved to be within FairlawnGig’s service area. Most are white collar businesses, such as IT firms, software and hardware engineers, and consultants.
• A new orthopaedic hospital is being developed in the town, in part because FairlawnGig can provide connectivity up to 100 Gbps for things like medical imaging and video conferencing.
• As businesses move in, so do workers looking for a shorter commute. Property values in the town have increased and realtors make a point to alert would-be buyers when a property is within FairlawnGig’s service area.

In short, Fairlawn officials see providing internet access as more than just a profit center. It is a public service initiative that is paying back dividends that will eventually exceed the $10 million investment taken from the city’s general fund to build the network. Taxes did not increase as a result of FairlawnGig either. Now other towns around Fairlawn and the city of Akron itself are showing interest in how to join forces to expand the public service well beyond Fairlawn’s town borders.

WOIO in Akron covered FairlawnGig back in January 2019 in this report explaining how a publicly owned fiber to the home service was delivering gig speed to this northeastern Ohio community. (2:31)

Windstream Communications lost between $3.2-5.1 million in lost profits because of a 2019 false advertising campaign run by Charter Communications in areas where the two companies compete for internet customers, claimed an expert witness in a court hearing to determine the damages Charter must pay.

In December, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain issued a summary judgment finding Charter responsible for sending out misleading advertising fliers that violated the federal Lanham Act and false advertising laws in place in some states.

“Shortly after Windstream filed for Chapter 11 protection, Charter commenced a false and misleading advertising campaign designed to cause irreparable injury and damage to Windstream’s reputation and business,” the original lawsuit filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York stated. “Charter targeted Windstream customers in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Nebraska, and North Carolina, which are several of Windstream’s top performing states.”

“On the envelopes for the advertisement, Charter intentionally utilized Windstream’s trademark and signature color pattern to mislead Windstream customers into believing that the advertisement came directly from Windstream. Indeed, Charter’s advertisement stated that it was ‘Important Information Enclosed for Windstream Customers.’”

The offending Charter flier seems to suggest Windstream is going out of business.

A later investigation found Charter sent at least 800,000 mailers to customers in service areas where Windstream competes with Spectrum.

Jeffrey Auman, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Windstream Communications, told the court last week the false ads directly harmed Windstream’s reputation with its customers, with some left believing the phone company was ceasing operations because of its bankruptcy filing. Auman argued it was fair for Charter to pay damages covering Windstream’s legal expenses to file the lawsuit and cover its advertising and promotional expenses incurred to rebut the ads and retain customers.

A company-provided expert witness testified Windstream lost customers and between $3.2 and $5.1 million in lost profits. Spectrum’s ad campaign also created long term negative “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” about Windstream’s health and ability to service customers. The witness claimed Spectrum’s fliers ended a “growth streak” for the phone company and has caused new customer projections to fall behind.

“It was a big deal with us,” Aubrey testified. “Word of mouth in these small communities means a lot.”

Windstream told Judge Drain the company has spent more than $4.3 million on service credits, promotional retention discounts, and cost-free upgrades to keep customers happy.

Charter has countered Windstream’s customer losses come from its inferior technology, which makes Windstream’s speeds slower and less competitive. Spectrum has upgraded internet customers in the midwest and parts of the southern U.S. to up to 200 Mbps for its Standard internet plan, which is much faster than what Windstream offers many of its DSL internet customers.

Some Comcast customers are receiving notifications their service may be briefly interrupted as a result of ongoing network enhancements:

As you can imagine, customers are using our services more than usual, and in certain neighborhoods we are adding capacity to improve our network and your service now. Your area has been identified as a location that will benefit from network improvements, which is why it’s necessary for us to complete the work at this time, so you’ll continue to connect and enjoy the services you expect.

We are installing more fiber throughout our network by replacing some coaxial cable with fiber lines. This will include some construction in your neighborhood and will cause some intermittent interruptions to your service during the day.

In the future, we’ll be able to offer you even more reliable service, greater network capacity and more gig speeds to more homes down the line. This means more downloading, more streaming and more gaming.

Comcast is currently preparing its network for full duplex DOCSIS 4.0 service by adopting “node plus zero” network architecture, which in plainer terms means removing signal amplifiers from existing lines and replacing a significant percentage of its copper coaxial cable infrastructure with fiber optics. The fiber network upgrades are reportedly bringing more consistent and faster internet speed on a more reliable network as soon as the switch is complete. Most customers won’t see fiber cables replacing the current cable line coming into their homes, however. The upgrade is mostly taking place on utility poles and, in some places, underground as Comcast replaces copper wiring with optical fiber cables.

Sometime next year, Comcast is expected to start adopting Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX) 4.0, the newest cable broadband standard, capable of bringing identical upload and download speeds to customers. It is the only major American cable operator to favor FDX, which will place upstream and downstream traffic on the same block of cable spectrum. Other cable operators including Charter Spectrum, Cox, and Mediacom will support Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD) 4.0, which is expected to be cheaper to deploy and will continue to keep downstream and upstream traffic confined to separate frequency bands, albeit larger ones capable of delivering much faster speeds.