Subscribe[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Sen Al Franken Grills Comcast-NBC Merger Advocates 2-4-10.flv[/flv]
Stop the Cap! has received several requests for Sen. Al Franken’s (D-Minnesota) comments during the Senate hearing in early February reviewing the proposed merger. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is the portion of the hearing where Franken comes out swinging in opposition to the ongoing consolidation of media companies in America. (February 4th – 14 minutes)
Broadband providers love to tout their Internet services as “unlimited, always on access at blazing fast speeds.” Increasingly, their service isn’t unlimited, it’s not always working, and those blazing fast speeds are doused in a shower of asterisks leading to fine print indicating “speeds are not guaranteed.”
Take Comcast, for example.
The Consumerist‘s reader Matt received a brochure from America’s largest cable operator filled with inaccuracies, falsehoods, and fine print. In order of appearance, let’s fact check:
Source: The Consumerist
Fiber Fiction: “Comcast High Speed Internet is delivered to your computer through the same fiber-optic network that delivers all those great channels to your television.”
Fiber Fact: Comcast does not operate an all-fiber network. Their distribution system uses a mix of fiber and standard copper coaxial cable. The fiber network is only a backbone, which connects to the same coaxial cable companies like Comcast have used since the 1970s. If you want a true fiber-optic network, you’ll need to sign up with Verizon FiOS or a municipally-run fiber provider. No national cable operator runs one. It’s part of their marketing rhetoric to try and capitalize on the benefits of fiber without actually spending the money to actually build a fiber system.
Speed Trap: “Download speeds up to 100 times faster than a 56K phone modem.”
Autobahn: This one has one of those asterisks attached — “actual speeds may vary.” Comcast doesn’t guarantee speed, and relies on the familiar “up to” disclaimer that phone companies love to use with their DSL service. If your neighborhood is clogged with users, the websites you visit run slowly, or Comcast has a problem somewhere, your speed will suffer.
Unlimited That Isn’t: “Unlimited usage for a flat, monthly fee.”
Unlimited Reality: Comcast has a usage limit of 250 GB per month. Exceed it and you potentially will get a call from Comcast lecturing you about your usage. Ignore them and you may be without your broadband service for a year.
Consumerist reader Matt was a victim of Comcast’s marketing doublespeak when he exceeded the limit and got a phone call from the company. Instead of being browbeaten by Comcast customer service, he was ready and armed with the brochure the company sent him:
I was told I used more data than they allow (250GB). I do not argue that I used over 250GB, in fact I went quite a bit over. Though I did want to ask for proof that affected their network, I figured it wasn’t the nicest way to start the interaction. I informed them that I used this because it was sold as “Unlimited usage for a flat, monthly rate.” He then told me it said “access.”
I had the brochure right next to me and quoted, “Unlimited usage for a flat, monthly rate.” He told me their website says something different, and my local franchise overstepped its bounds, and their website overrules the “Important Information about our services, Charleston SC” sales brochure sent to me. If I went over again (It goes by calender month, not billing cycle) I would be disconnected for 1 year without giving me a call.
I asked if Comcast had a tool to help me monitor bandwidth. “Not in your market” he told me. “Download something from Google that will do it for you.”
As consumers continue to expand their broadband usage to take advantage of services like online video and file backup, services Comcast itself offers, more and more will run up against Comcast’s monthly usage limit. Although your Comcast bill increases year after year, their usage limit has not. It was 250 GB in 2008 and remains the same in 2010. Thanks to Stop the Cap! readers Dave and Michael who sent word our way.
Broadband Reports this morning heard from a trusted source who says America’s largest cable operator is considering offering 250Mbps service to customers, perhaps as early as 2011.
While some cable operators (Time Warner Cable) have dragged their feet on DOCSIS 3 upgrades, Comcast has not — it is expected to have 100 percent of its cable systems upgraded this year.
DOCSIS 3 provides vastly increased speeds across a more robust network. Older standards provided neighborhoods with a single 6 Mhz channel, with a 36Mbps downstream pipeline. While that may be fine for a neighborhood browsing web pages and checking e-mail, it doesn’t take much too much high bandwidth activity to start slowing speeds down. DOCSIS 3 “bonds” multiple channels together to create one fat pipeline. Newer chipsets support eight combined 6Mhz channels, capable of providing that same neighborhood with 320Mbps of capacity. Using schemes like PowerBoost, or with few others online, Comcast can deliver occasional bursts of speed at 250Mbps to customers without further upgrades, notes Dave Burstein of DSL Prime.
The bigger question is will customers pay the premium price for 250Mbps if Comcast maintains its 250GB usage limit on it? Super speed tiers like this are useful to customers using high bandwidth applications. It doesn’t make sense to upgrade to premium speeds if they’re accompanied by a usage governor.
HBO Go is currently only available directly to Verizon FiOS customers. Comcast customers have access through Fancast, and Time Warner Cable indicated it wasn't interested in participating in HBO Go, for now.
HBO subscribers who are also Verizon FiOS TV customers are the first to get access to the premium channel’s new online video portal — HBO Go, launched Wednesday with over 600 hours of HBO programming, available free to authenticated HBO and FiOS subscribers.
HBO Go is another project spawned from the cable and pay television industry’s TV Everywhere project — putting television programming online for anytime viewing, for free, as long as you maintain a cable or pay television subscription.
Ironically, the service launched Wednesday on Verizon’s telco-TV service FiOS, leaving lots of cable subscribers waiting for access. If you subscribe to HBO through cable, satellite, or U-verse, the service remains unavailable to you, for now. Comcast subscribers already had access to HBO’s programming through the Fancast Xfinity TV website. If you don’t pay for television, the service remains unavailable to you indefinitely — they won’t sell it to you at any price.
“Ultimately this is about extending the subscriber lifecycle,” HBO co-president Eric Kessler said. “It’s more about subscriber retention.”
Subscriber retention through incumbent providers, he means. HBO doesn’t want to risk selling direct to online consumers who might want to cut ties with their cable or other pay television provider.
Stop the Cap! reader Jared has FiOS and HBO and let us sample the service through his FiOS connection (his 25Mbps/25Mbps connection with remote access maxed out our Road Runner Turbo connection and still left him plenty of leftover speed).
Let’s start with the viewing experience.
It’s a big improvement over HBO’s Wisconsin trial in 2008 with Time Warner Cable, which required viewers to download Windows Media-encoded video files protected with Microsoft’s annoying digital rights management scheme. It was cumbersome for trial participants, and dealing with Microsoft’s player and DRM cut Mac owners out of the trial.
HBO Go is Flash-based, using Adobe’s Real-Time Messaging Protocol to keep viewers from saving permanent copies for themselves (and potentially their friends.) Using Verizon FiOS, viewers should rarely encounter any artifacts or speed-related viewing problems. The picture was fine, even for me using remote access software. Of course, if your Internet connection is considerably slower than FiOS or your neighborhood suffers from online congestion, you could experience issues streaming HD content, but HBO Go is designed to buffer when encountering slower connections. The files are encoded in MPEG-4 at 1.2Mbps and 2.6Mbps, which theoretically should be fine for the majority of viewers. Comcast subscribers – remember watching counts against your usage cap.
Wandering around the HBO Go library was simple — easier to navigate and less cluttered than Hulu. The site was intuitive and should be easy to use for just about everyone.
Up to three members of your household can each watch programming from the service at the same time, even away from home, anywhere in the country.
HBO Go claims to be a work in progress — about 25% of the content will be refreshed by HBO every week, with new episodes available on the service immediately following their TV premiere.
But the service hardly offers a comprehensive viewing experience. It’s much closer to Hulu or your cable company’s HBO on Demand service.
For example, rights issues limit virtually all of HBO’s original series to a handful of recent episodes or seasons. Only The Wire has a complete library to watch from its premiere forward. Curb Your Enthusiasm, aptly named when considering HBO Go, is missing completely. So is Real Time with Bill Maher, although four of his earlier specials are archived on the site.
As for movies, there are gaping holes there as well. Available titles resemble Cinemax’s selection of movies you’ve already seen. There are gaps between what you can watch on HBO itself and what is available on HBO Go. Babe is online, for instance, but anything Harry Potter isn’t.
In other words, what could have been a compelling addition for HBO subscribers feels redundant. I would never pay anything extra for HBO Go, nor will it be a factor in keeping HBO.
Online viewers need not apply.
HBO could have used the opportunity to sell the service to non-cable subscribers for a monthly fee and pick up some additional revenue, but that wouldn’t sit well with the pay television cartel that is behind the TV Everywhere concept. They don’t want you cord cutting — those that have are locked out of the HBO Go Clubhouse. For now, I suspect few were clamoring to get in.
Providing computers in income-challenged neighborhoods and free access to wireless Internet for Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods simply won’t do in Comcast’s home city. The cable giant has filed objections to a proposal to bring access to those who would never be able to afford Comcast’s asking price for broadband.
Comcast Center in Philadelphia
Comcast executive vice president David Cohen made it all too clear in a story from Bloomberg News:
“Those applications don’t qualify for funding primarily because they are applications to provide service in areas where there is already broadband service,” Cohen said. He didn’t provide an estimate of how many applications would be implicated, and said Comcast would point out only applications that would serve areas where it provides Internet service.
“We would mostly care if it goes to an area where we’re the broadband provider,” Cohen said.
Comcast has concerns about tax dollars and other benefits going to projects that could compete with Comcast’s offerings. But Comcast’s rank hypocrisy is on full display when one considers public funding is a-okay when it is directed towards Comcast:
Comcast executives lobbied the state government for financial assistance to build their new Center City headquarters. The firm unsuccessfully sought a Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) designation for its building, which would have provided local and state tax relief. Despite the fact that KOZs are intended to spur development in areas of blight, not prosperous Center City locations, the $30 billion company almost succeeded with the help of Gov. Rendell. Had the Comcast effort prevailed, the company would have been exempt from state and local business taxes until 2015.
The Pennsylvania Legislature defeated Comcast’s and the governor’s efforts. The governor then made an end-run around the legislature, funneling nearly $43 million in taxpayer money to aid Comcast and pay for infrastructure near the Comcast building, prompting outrage from many. Comcast’s direct incentives were nearly $13 million. The economic development funds equated to roughly 10 percent of the building’s cost.
Rival office landlords complained bitterly about the public subsidies, fearing that Comcast Center will lead to a glut of downtown office space and lure away their corporate tenants.
Isn’t that a familiar argument. The state of Pennsylvania didn’t help matters when it didn’t include the project on a list of “recommended projects” it sent to federal officials.
Coming up…
The "Massive News" theme by: Press75.com
