AT&T’s WiMAX Internet service in Alaska will be switched off Jan. 31, forcing rural Alaskan customers to find an alternative for inexpensive wireless service in areas where DSL or cable broadband is unavailable.

The company stopped signing up new customers last March and has been repeatedly notifying existing customers they will need to find an alternative service soon.

AT&T is shutting off the aging WiMAX network, which delivered up to 2Mbps service at prices starting at around $20 a month, in favor of newer wireless broadband services, including AT&T’s LTE 4G service and Wi-Fi hot spots.

AT&T is recommending customers switch to one of its mobile broadband plans. But WiMAX customers are likely to experience sticker shock when they see the difference in price.

AT&T charges $40 a month for just 1GB of usage plus an additional $20 a month device fee on its Mobile Share Device Data Plan.

[flv width=”636″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Susan Crawford on Captive Audience The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age 12-12.flv[/flv]

Invest an hour of your time and learn about how America ceded its broadband leadership to a handful of telecom companies that have carved out comfortable, barely competitive territories for themselves, leaving Americans overpaying for slow broadband service. Susan Crawford is author of the new book, “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” which has just been published. (65 minutes)

Time Warner Cable is sending apology letters to former customers acknowledging the company’s cable service has not always lived up to expectations, but improvements have been made that ex-subscribers should consider.

The effort is part of a $50 million marketing campaign that will push a 30-day money back guarantee and claims their competitors’ promised savings have not materialized.

“The Better Guarantee”-campaign will target customers who have dropped the cable operator in favor of competitors that include AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS.

Although both AT&T and Verizon offer attractive introductory rates, Time Warner Cable says the savings disappear after the promotion expires. The company’s new ad campaign will attempt to entice customers back with offers of lower rates, a $200 reward card, and better service, including faster broadband speeds and new products like online apps for video streaming and home security services.

The New York Times reports the campaign was announced one week before the cable operator releases its latest fourth quarter earnings, which may show a growing number of customers canceling their cable television service. Jeffries & Company forecast Time Warner will report 140,000 subscribers lost during the last quarter, up from 129,000 in the same quarter of 2011.

Customers are invited to sample Time Warner’s offerings for 30 days. If they don’t like the service, the company will send their money back.

That may not be enough. The American Consumer Satisfaction Index has top-rated Verizon FiOS for three years in a row. Time Warner Cable received a below average, but improving rating.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TWC The Better Guarantee 1-21-13.flv[/flv]

Time Warner Cable’s new television ad promoting its “Better Guarantee.”  (1 minute)

Cox Cable, on the heels of announcing another rate increase, is earning customer ire for downright nasty customer service.

Customers dealing with two different service blackouts and a flood have gotten a thumbs-down response from Cox when looking for some service credits and understanding.

‘We don’t give refunds,’ came the reply from one customer service agent called by Stop the Cap! reader Jennifer from Providence, R.I. Her service went out in mid-December after a burst water pipe in the neighborhood flooded their home, making in uninhabitable until a mold mitigation team completed repairs. After fleeing to stay with relatives, it suddenly dawned on Jennifer that Cox Cable kept her waiting on hold so long, she hung up and forgot to call them back.

“All I needed to do was notify them we were not going to be using our Cox service for about a month and we needed to suspend our account,” Jennifer tells us. “When I finally got a customer service agent, the first thing I heard was him blowing his nose several times before he finally introduced himself.”

The surly agent was not interested in Jennifer’s plight or her request to suspend service.

“Your flooding problems are yours to solve and we can’t help you with suspending service unless you are going away for much longer than that,” came the reply. “And we are certainly not able to give you a refund either. It isn’t our fault.”

Jennifer was stunned at the nasty attitude she got, especially after other companies were far more understanding.

“I had nothing but sympathy from Verizon, the power company, and even the newspaper which we also stopped,” she says. “Cox could not have cared less and we did not even create the problem.”

Cox customers in Ohio also got the same special touch from Cox’s representatives.

Rev. Dave Connor from Lakewood was looking for a $1.50 credit for a few local channels that were stripped off his cable lineup because of yet another carriage-for-money dispute. Raycom wanted more cash for its two local channels and Cox did not want to pay so off they went from the lineup, at least temporarily. But the cable operator did not want to give any refunds for the missing channels customers had been paying to receive.

It took several escalating phone calls before Cox finally relented to a one-time credit, putting a sour taste in the Rev. Dave’s mouth.

“Some ‘friend in the digital age,’” he told the Lakewood Patch, referencing the company’s ad slogan.

Before others got the idea they deserved a refund as well, Dana Alexander Nolfe, director of communications for Cox, hurried out to let customers know they can just forget it.

Nolfe told the Patch the refund granted Connor was a one-time “gesture of goodwill,” adding no one else will likely be given a similar refund.

“We are not crediting our customers as a result of the Raycom dispute,” Nolfe said. “We offer a package of channels, not individual channels on our lineup. We regularly make changes to our lineup, mostly with additions, but at times, regrettably, when a channel is removed from our lineup.”

Ian King called Cox “the worst,” noting the company refused refunds for customers left without service for days after the remnants of Hurricane Sandy meandered across Ohio.

“Cox is nothing but a PR campaign that constantly tells us how wonderful they are, but in reality they could care less,” King said.

Jennifer says she won’t forget.

“After we move back, one of the first things I will be doing is dropping them and their smug representative on their heads.”

Downtown Shenyang

When corporate executives discover the merits of outsourcing jobs to overseas workers in China or India, that wins them a large bonus for improved efficiency and successful cost-cutting. When an enterprising employee does the same thing, that is a heinous security risk.

Verizon’s RISK Team, which sells enterprise-level security services to large companies, discovered a “severe” security threat when it went to work for a “critical U.S. infrastructure company” (which goes unnamed) that found some unusual activity in its private network logs.

It all started when the company began shifting employees away from in-office work towards cheaper telecommuting. To allow this to happen, a secure virtual private network was established allowing developers to manage their work from home.

When the company began reviewing the network logs, it discovered a curious workday connection being established almost daily originating from Shenyang, China. The company hired Verizon’s RISK Team to consider the implications.

Company security personnel were initially concerned the Chinese had infiltrated their private network even though network access required the use of a rotating token RSA key fob. Even harder to understand, security officials watched the employee working at his office desk at the same time.

Was it a Chinese intelligence agency break-in? Malware? Hackers?

No, it turned out the employee, who Verizon calls “Bob,” had simply outsourced his job responsibilities to a contracting firm in China.

Company officials authorized some infiltration of their own, asking Verizon to review a forensic image quietly obtained from Bob’s workstation. Verizon security officials were surprised when they found hundreds of .PDF invoices sent from the third party contractor-developer… in Shenyang, China. Verizon’s RISK blog explains further:

As it turns out, Bob had simply outsourced his own job to a Chinese consulting firm. Bob spent less than one fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese firm to do his job for him. Authentication was no problem, he physically FedEx’d his RSA token to China so that the third-party contractor could log-in under his credentials during the workday. It would appear that he was working an average 9 to 5 work day. Investigators checked his web browsing history, and that told the whole story.

A typical ‘work day’ for Bob looked like this:

• 9:00 a.m. – Arrive and surf Reddit for a couple of hours. Watch cat videos
• 11:30 a.m. – Take lunch
• 1:00 p.m. – Ebay time.
• 2:00 – ish p.m Facebook updates – LinkedIn
• 4:30 p.m. – End of day update e-mail to management.
• 5:00 p.m. – Go home

Evidence even suggested he had the same scam going across multiple companies in the area. All told, it looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about fifty grand annually. The best part? Investigators had the opportunity to read through his performance reviews while working alongside HR. For the last several years in a row he received excellent remarks. His code was clean, well written, and submitted in a timely fashion. Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building.