Netflix continues to step up its attacks on providers who implement Internet Overcharging schemes on their wired broadband customers.

That concern is understandable as Netflix increasingly transitions to broadband streaming instead of mailing DVD’s to customers.

Getting in the way are five of the nation’s seven largest broadband providers, all imposing limits on customers just as they discover they might be able to do without cable television.

Netflix’s streamed HD shows now consume around 2GB per hour, according to Netflix general counsel David Hyman.  That can eat through usage allowances quickly.  Hyman penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last year blasting the practices of usage caps and consumption billing.

Hyman

“Wireline bandwidth is an almost unlimited resource due to advances in Internet architecture,” Hyman wrote. “The marginal cost of providing an extra gigabyte of data—enough to deliver one episode of 30 Rock from Netflix—is less than one cent, and falling.”

That doesn’t seem to matter much to Comcast, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, and Cox.  All four providers have introduced hard usage limits on customers — a usage cap.  Exceeding it gives any of those providers the right to cut off your broadband service.  AT&T, always one to see a financial angle, charges for excess use of their DSL and U-verse service — $10 for every 50GB. Time Warner Cable recently announced its own experimental “optional” usage pricing package for very light users who consume fewer than 5GB per month.  It will slap overlimit fees on those participating customers who break through the 5GB ceiling at a rate of $1/GB, an enormous markup.

Providers with strict caps usually argue they come as a result of their own network’s capacity problems.  Cable operators who do not consistently manage their network traffic can experience traffic clogs by overselling service without upgrading capacity to sustain user demand.  But providers like Comcast, Cox, and Charter resolved those capacity problems with upgrades to DOCSIS 3 technology, which offer operators an exponentially bigger pipeline for Internet traffic.

Although Comcast promised to regularly review and adjust usage caps since implementing them four years ago, the nation’s largest cable operator has thus far seen no need to raise them.

“We feel that that is an extraordinarily large amount of data,” says Comcast’s Charlie Davis. “That limit is there to make sure we provide a great online experience for every single paying customer.”

Wall Street bankers have closely monitored the industry’s early results from Internet Overcharging, and have been encouraged, so long as operators implement it carefully.

Credit Suisse in a 2011 report to its investor clients suggested the key for successful usage-based pricing is to introduce it slowly and keep “sticker shock to a minimum in the early days” to reduce backlash by consumers and lawmakers.

Once established, the sky is the limit.

Netflix itself is also battling an Internet Overcharging scheme it faces — double-dipping by cable operators like Comcast.  In addition to the fees Comcast collects from customers for its broadband service, the cable operator also wants to be paid directly by Netflix to allow the movie service’s traffic on its network.

That’s an Internet toll booth, charges Netflix and consumer groups.  It’s also uncompetitive, says Hyman.

This month Comcast unveiled its own movie and TV show streaming service — Xfinity Streampix — from which, unsurprisingly, the cable company has not sought extra traffic payments from itself.

Opposed to Internet Overcharging

Three providers which don’t cap customers don’t see a reason to try.

Verizon Communications says its fiber network FiOS has plenty of capacity and has no plans to restrict customers’ enjoyment of the service.  In 2009, Cablevision’s Jim Blackley told one panel discussion usage caps are not in the cards.

“We don’t want customers to think about byte caps so that’s not on our horizon,” Blackley said. “We literally don’t want consumers to think about how they’re consuming high-speed services. It’s a pretty powerful drug and we want people to use more and more of it.”

California’s Sonic.net Inc., goes even further.  Its CEO, Dane Jasper, believes the Federal Communications Commission needs to be more assertive about protecting America’s broadband revolution and the customers that depend on the service.

The fact different operators can take radically different positions on the subject, despite running similar networks, suggests technical necessity is not the reason providers are implementing usage restrictions and extra fees on customers.

As Hyman writes:

Bandwidth caps with fees piled on top are a lousy way to manage traffic. All of the costs of supplying residential broadband are for supporting peak usage. Bandwidth consumed off-peak is completely free. If Internet service providers really wanted to manage traffic efficiently, they would limit speeds at peak times. If their goal is instead to increase revenues or lessen competition, getting consumers to pay per gigabyte is an excellent strategy.

Consumer access to unlimited bandwidth is good for society. It fosters innovation, drives commerce, and advances political and social discourse. Given that bandwidth is cheap and plentiful and will only grow more so with time, there is no good reason for bandwidth caps and fees to take root.

Consumers and regulators need to take heed of what is happening and avoid winding up like the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water. It’s time to jump before it’s too late.

Consumers and community leaders across Georgia can now rest a little easier knowing AT&T’s plans to throw up roadblocks against community broadband have gone awry.  SB313, a custom-written corporate welfare bill designed to protect cable and phone companies from competition, has reportedly been turned into a “study bill” — a graceful way to kill bad legislation without hurting too many feelings.

It wasn’t just the fact incumbent phone and cable companies wanted to stop community broadband projects from wiring communities they’ve ignored for years.  It wasn’t even the absurdity of the bill defining Georgia’s “broadband” speeds at just 200kbps (later ‘generously’ amended and increased to 758kbps).  This bill died because of consumer and community outrage — local officials working hand in hand with woefully under-served Georgians asking their elected officials why they seemed to care more about AT&T’s interests than those of the people who elected them to office.

Specious political arguments about “government/taxpayer involvement in broadband” and a sudden blitz of campaign contributions for the bill’s backers simply couldn’t overcome the reality of broadband-challenged rural Georgia.

According to the National Broadband Map, Georgia ranks 20th in the nation for broadband access. According to the forward of a report by Rich Calhoun, Program Director of the Georgia Technology Initiative, “As I traveled through the state to talk with leaders in municipalities, counties and community anchor institutions, I found that many places throughout Georgia indicated that they did not have access to affordable or sufficient broadband services. Telecommunications firms who have made significant investments in Georgia indicated that in some areas of the state the return on investment would not qualify for further investment at the present time.”

As Stop the Cap! exposed to our readers, AT&T isn’t interested in serving the broadband needs of rural Georgia and doesn’t want anyone else serving them either.

We exposed the well-financed propaganda campaign that maligned some of Georgia’s past experiences with municipal broadband, many projects derailed not by government ‘failure’ but through political interference and the private sector.  We showed readers how to follow the money to see the connection between campaign contributions and the sudden interest in effectively banning community broadband.  We exposed the fact this is a coordinated, nationwide effort by a corporate backed lobbying group (ALEC) that pays to wine and dine lawmakers and then sell them on a catalog of bills ghost-written by some of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies.  Legislation that hamstrings competition and protects monopoly profits, while always conveniently exempting incumbent providers from the terms of the bills they effectively wrote.

But the real victory goes to readers who picked up the phone or sent e-mail letting Georgia legislators know you were watching them and paying attention to this obvious corporate welfare bill.  You made it more expensive for lawmakers to vote with AT&T, despite their campaign contributions, than to vote for -your- interests.  The next election is never too far away.

Why We Fight: These are the minimum speeds needed by some of Georgia's most important institutions. While state lawmakers have 100Mbps access in Atlanta, some are content to define 758kbps "broadband" as just fine for the rest of the state.

We also applaud the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.  Their Community Broadband Networks project was able to educate, coordinate, and rally local governments who may not have been aware their broadband future was about to be indefinitely held ransom by AT&T and Comcast.

We never underestimate AT&T’s power and money.  But they continue to underestimate us and the communities they are supposed to be serving.

Common sense prevailed in Georgia.  South Carolina may be a different story.  Their own anti-broadband measure is still alive and kicking.  We’ll be holding additional “calls to action” on this bad bill shortly.

Stay involved in the fight.  The better broadband you protect may be your own.

Inmates at the Liberty County Jail in Texas managed to outwit Comcast’s set top boxes to watch “hours on end” of soft-core pornography for free, courtesy of the cable company.

Jail Warden Tim New claimed he spent weeks trying to get Comcast technicians out to the county facility to fix the problem — one that Comcast denied could be happening.

“4 Dorm watching porno channel again,” read one February security log obtained by ABC News. Just three days later, a guard wrote, “One of the TV’s had porn on it. Told them to change the channel.”

“I believe that Comcast just couldn’t believe that their system had been manipulated,” Capt. Rex Evans with the Liberty Count sheriff’s office told ABC.

It turns out bypassing the cable boxes effectively opened every channel up for viewing.

It finally took a threat from County Judge Craig McNair to cancel Comcast service in the jail to get the cable company to dispatch a technician.

“Once Liberty County made us aware the inmates had access to Cinemax, we took the necessary steps to block access to the channel,” a representative for the cable company said.

Inmates told KPRC that there would be “a lot of fights” because of the porn sessions and that showers had become “hell” because of Cinemax.

[flv width=”624″ height=”372″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KPRC Houston Nightly porno TV shows for inmates prompt action by county leaders 2-29-12.flv[/flv]

KPRC-TV in Houston covers a porn scandal inside Liberty County jails.  Public safety officials blame Comcast for not pulling the plug on the adult programming.  (3 minutes)

Last week’s shocking development that Cablevision, a major cable operator in greater New York City, New Jersey and Connecticut is not going to raise rates in 2012 is bad news for other cable operators itching to raise rates once again this year.

Cablevision’s decision was made as the company continues to battle Verizon FiOS, the phone company’s fiber-to-home-service across its service area.  Verizon has been playing hardball with Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and Cablevision in its metro New York service area, offering up to $500 in rebates to sign new customers.  That level of vicious competition has been great for consumers, but lousy for Wall Street.

Investors were not pleased with Cablevision’s pass on rate hikes and its intention to invest a lot more in system upgrades than originally planned.  Wall Street loves increased revenue and hates it when companies spend it on their customers.

With all of this competition breaking out, Comcast and Time Warner Cable may be more than a little uncomfortable sitting down at an antitrust hearing later this month to discuss their new agreement with Verizon to cross-market cable and mobile service.  In return for the cable industry signaling they will never compete with Verizon’s mobile phone offering, Verizon has generously purchased the cable industry’s leftover spectrum and agreed to pitch cable TV subscriptions to Verizon Wireless customers.  With this new “non-aggression treaty,” will there still be a need to offer $500 gift cards and cut-rate prices to attract new customers?  Consumer groups think not.

A greater percentage of Cablevision’s service area is served by Verizon’s fiber network than either Time Warner Cable or Comcast.  Competition is forcing Cablevision to rethink the usual cable industry plan for financial success — force channels customers don’t want and raise rates up to 5% a year to pay for the “increased costs of doing business.”  Consumers are fed up with $150 monthly cable bills and will take Verizon up on an offer than cuts rates $50 a month and hands over up to $500 just for saying “yes” to FiOS.

Angelakis

Comcast says it admires Time Warner Cable for risking subscriber wrath over plans to introduce usage-based billing Time Warner says will be optional for customers in southern Texas.  But Comcast admits it is not brave enough to try similar pricing schemes themselves, fearing a customer backlash.

“We have a very high customer satisfaction rating and we don’t really want to rock the boat on [our broadband product],” Comcast chief financial officer Michael Angelakis told an audience Tuesday at a Wall Street bank-sponsored media and telecom conference in San Francisco. “I give them credit for trying different things, [but] we have real momentum in that business and the goal is to keep it.”

Comcast was a spectator of the consumer and political backlash against Time Warner Cable when it last experimented with usage pricing in April 2009.  Within two weeks, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt shelved the plan under pressure from both customers and lawmakers.

Now Time Warner Cable wants to reintroduce the concept as an option for customers of a new “Internet Essentials” discounted broadband tier that would include a $5 monthly discount if customers kept usage under 5GB per month.

Some veterans of the 2009 battle suspect Time Warner is trying to slowly slip usage pricing past customers waiting to fight its return by first suggesting it is only an option, but later herding broadband customers into usage based plans by substantially raising the price of flat rate service.

“Looks like a trial run the company could easily expand to all of their Internet customers,” shares Stop the Cap! reader Jeff in San Antonio, Tex., one of the cities that will participate in the upcoming usage-based plan. “I have a hard time believing Time Warner is going through all the effort developing usage meters and billing support for usage pricing just to market a handful of customers a $5 discount.”

Jeff, who helped fend off the cable company’s original Internet Overcharging experiment in 2009, suspects Time Warner’s earlier attempt to market a “flat rate” broadband option at $150 a month could still be a blueprint for how the company could push customers out of their unlimited plans.

“They can claim they want to keep unlimited Internet, but have remained silent about how much they will charge for it,” Jeff says. “We need something in writing that this company will not gouge customers with the fine print going forward.”

Stop the Cap! posed several similar questions to Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon, director of digital communications, through the cable company’s blog.  The company, to date, has offered no response.