Al Sharpton: Friend of Charter/Spectrum

During a period of renewed consciousness about the Black Lives Matter movement, many U.S. corporations are stepping up to donate money and resources to address what they call systemic racism. Charter Communications, which owns and operates Spectrum, is one such company.

The cable and broadband provider announced this week it was “investing $10 million” with the National Urban League and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. The two civil rights groups coincidentally are long-standing recipients of Charter’s sponsorships and donations and are among the cable company’s best non-profit friends, reliably writing letters to regulators urging them to approve whatever is on the cable company’s agenda, including mergers and acquisitions, rolling back regulations, or blocking pro-consumer legislation.

Charter claimed in a press release its $10 million “investment” would help provide low-interest loans to businesses in underserved communities:

Charter’s Spectrum Community Investment Loan Fund (the Loan Fund) will invest $3 million in NUL’s community development financial institution (CDFI), the Urban Empowerment Fund (UEF), which will make individual loans to minority-owned small businesses and, under the direction of and on behalf of NAN, the Loan Fund will invest an additional $3 million in low-interest loans directly to CDFIs. In addition, Charter will provide $3.5 million in PSA value to promote its partners’ Loan Fund opportunities, and will contribute a $500,000 capacity grant to the NUL for revitalizing its CDFI platform including funding for staffing, infrastructure, and operations.

“In all communities, small business ownership and growth are fundamental to developing and sustaining economic power, which is critical to their long-term success,” said Tom Rutledge, chairman and CEO of Charter Communications. “Building on our valued partnerships with the National Urban League and National Action Network, these investments will support small diverse-owned businesses through access to much-needed low-interest capital and help build thriving communities across the country.”

The contributions might also be seen as “returning the favor” for the groups’ work on behalf of Charter’s 2016 merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Both non-profit groups were instrumental in contacting state and federal regulators, urging them to approve that merger that proved unpopular with many consumers.

Despite repeatedly promising the public and regulators that a merger of T-Mobile and Sprint would create thousands of new jobs, this week hundreds of Sprint employees are learning their old jobs are gone.

In a brief six minute conference call Monday hosted by T-Mobile vice president James Kirby, almost 400 people on the call learned their jobs with Sprint’s inside sales division were being eliminated and their last day of employment will be Aug. 17. It was just one of several conference calls announcing layoffs for Sprint’s sales teams, according to Techcrunch, notably those working on business and commercial sales. Other jobs targeted for cuts included national retail account executives, and indirect sales-affiliated account managers and executives.

So far, the pattern of layoffs is clearly favoring T-Mobile, with only a handful of top Sprint executives remaining with the company. In 2018, Sprint disclosed it had about 6,000 employees working in its headquarters city — Overland Park, Kan. T-Mobile has already made it clear it was slimming down Sprint’s operations there. A year ago, Sprint sold its headquarters campus to Wichita-based Occidental Management in a sale-leaseback deal, which freed up cash for Sprint, while allowing the company to continue renting the same office space. Consolidation is expected to reduce the number of buildings leased by the wireless carrier from 11 to just four.

According to employee messaging forum, thelayoff.com, many independent Sprint retailers are also being notified by T-Mobile their contracts to sell Sprint devices are being terminated in 120 days, which may result in store closures and additional job losses.

The job losses come despite repeated promises from former T-Mobile CEO John Legere to regulators and employees that the merger would result in job growth.

“In total, New T-Mobile will have more than 11,000 additional employees on our payroll by 2024 compared to what the combined standalone companies would have,” Legere claimed in an open letter last April.

Cricket Wireless and AT&T are being sued by Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh for allegedly selling phones both companies knew would stop working on Cricket’s network a year after the two companies merged.

Frosh announced the lawsuit on Monday, claiming both wireless companies violated the Maryland Consumer Protection Act.

Cricket formerly operated its own mobile network, which relied on CDMA technology. Customers were required to use devices compatible with that mobile standard to access the Cricket network. In July 2013, AT&T agreed to acquire Cricket Wireless’ parent, Leap Wireless, for $1.2 billion. The FCC approved the acquisition in March 2014. Cricket, now under AT&T’s ownership, continued to sell CDMA mobile devices to consumers for the next year. Frosh contends both companies knew AT&T was planning to decommission Cricket’s cellular network and move customers to AT&T’s own network, which uses GSM technology incompatible with CDMA.

Frosh

That left customers with devices that stopped working with their Cricket service, requiring many to purchase new phones compatible with AT&T’s GSM network. Other customers discovered their Cricket phones were locked exclusively to Cricket’s network, and the company refused to unlock the phones so they could be used on a competitor’s network. Many customers complained their costly smartphones were less than a year old before they stopped working. Cricket’s only solution was to buy a new device, often costing hundreds of dollars.

“Cricket and AT&T continued to market and sell a product to consumers they knew wouldn’t work after their merger was complete,” said Frosh. “This practice, we allege, was undertaken to maximize profit from the sale of expensive smartphones without regard for the harm it would cause consumers.”

The lawsuit is seeking restitution, an injunction preventing Cricket and AT&T from engaging in unfair or deceptive trade practices, as well as civil penalties and costs.

A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Wednesday, September 9, 2020, at the Office of Administrative Hearings in Hunt Valley, Md. For more information, Maryland residents can call the Consumer Protection Division hotline at 410-528-8662 or toll free at 1-888-743-0023.

If you’ve ever lived in small-town America, you know how bad the internet can sometimes be. So one town in North Carolina decided: If we can’t make fast internet come to us, we’ll build it ourselves. And they did, despite laughter and disbelief from Time Warner Cable (today known as Spectrum).

When the city started installing fiber optics, the incumbent cable and phone companies did not like the competition and fought back, hiring an army of 40 lobbyists. The telecom companies enlisted the support of the now Republican-controlled state legislature, often with the help of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other conservative groups. Together, they hammered home scare stories with suspect studies critical of municipal broadband written by not-so-independent researchers ghost-funded by many of the same big cable and phone companies.

National Public Radio’s “Planet Money” looks at what happened when the City of Wilson decided to try and start its own internet provider, and how it started a fight that eventually spread to dozens of states, a fight about whether cities should even be allowed to compete with big internet providers, and what the effect the outcome might have on working remotely. But the citizens of Wilson seem to love Greenlight Community Broadband, right down to its well-regarded customer service, which includes dropping by elderly customers’ homes during lunch to troubleshoot set-top boxes and nefarious remote control confusion. (22:47)

Cox was planning to get into the wireless business back in 2010 until T-Mobile started slashing prices after a failed merger with AT&T a year later. Cox canceled its mobile ambitions in 2012. Now they are interested once again.

Cox Communications is in advanced stages of launching a new mobile service for customers that subscribe to at least one Cox cable service, according to sources speaking to multiple media outlets.

“We believe the market is becoming more attractive for us to enter the wireless space and we are exploring it more aggressively now, but have not announced any specific plans,” company spokesperson Todd Smith wrote in response to questions from Light Reading. “We have not entered into any MVNO agreements yet.”

Stop the Cap! has learned Cox has spoken to at least two major wireless carriers about signing an agreement that would allow customers to roam on a carrier’s pre-existing wireless network. AT&T is reportedly aggressively pursuing Cox and other cable operators to resell access to its network, after watching Charter’s Spectrum Mobile and Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile partner with Verizon Wireless.

A source tells us Cox would offer pricing and packages comparable to what Charter and Comcast offer customers — at least two plans, one flat rate unlimited, selling for around $45 a month, and a second “By the Gig” plan that would include 1 GB of data, unlimited voice and texting for between $14-16. Customers would be billed an additional $14-16 for each additional gigabyte consumed during the month.

Cox will market its wireless service to current customers that subscribe to at least one Cox product. If a customer switches to a competitor, Cox would charge an additional non-customer wireless fee, likely $20 a month.

If Cox closely follows Comcast and Charter, it will debut with a very limited selection of premium devices available for purchase or 0% financing, with Bring Your Own Device plans likely to follow. Devices will be programmed to favor cable industry or home Wi-Fi where available and automatically switch to 4G LTE service from an unspecified carrier once traveling outside of a Wi-Fi signal area. A soft cap of around 20 GB of usage per month will also likely be attached to the unlimited plan, with speed throttling applied once customers exceed that amount.

Cox had aborted attempts to enter the wireless business earlier. In 2012, Cox was months away from launching wireless service over its own 3G CDMA network over favorable 700 MHz spectrum it acquired earlier. It suddenly dropped the effort after AT&T failed to acquire T-Mobile in 2011 and T-Mobile began cutting prices to shake up the wireless industry.

Cable operators have attempted to keep wireless costs as low as possible, combining the use of cable companies’ pre-existing Wi-Fi hotspot networks with agreements with third party wireless carriers to handle data traffic and calls. Cable operators have so far chosen not to construct their own wireless mobile networks, although there are indications Charter will probably be the first to build some of its own wireless capacity using 3.5 GHz CBRS spectrum, which will likely work better outdoors than indoors. The more traffic wireless companies can offload to their own networks, the lower their costs.

Cox would likely launch its mobile offering by the fourth quarter of this year, in time for the holiday season.