Comcast is raising internet speeds of several of its XFINITY internet service plans in the northeastern United States as it continues to battle Verizon’s fiber to the home network FiOS.

“With new devices coming online for consumers every day, we’re committed to offering the fastest speeds and the best features and overall experience so our customers can take advantage of the technology available,” said Kevin Casey, president of Comcast’s Northeast Division. “We’ve increased speeds 17 times in the last 17 years, and continue to invest to deliver a fast, innovative and reliable experience in and out of the home.”

• Blast download speeds increase from 200 Mbps to 250 Mbps
• Performance Pro download speeds increase from 100 Mbps to 150 Mbps
• Performance download speeds increase from 25 Mbps to 60 Mbps
• Starter download speeds increase from 10 Mbps to 15 Mbps

Most customers can expect to see an average increase of 35-50 Mbps of enhanced download speed starting sometime this month. There is no news if upload speeds are affected. It may be necessary to briefly unplug your cable modem to reset to the new speeds.

The changes will affect customers from Maine to Virginia. Comcast has already increased broadband speeds in parts of the midwest and west coast. The cable company says 80% of its internet customers now subscribe to broadband speeds of 150 Mbps or more.

Viacom is preparing to launch its own direct-to-consumer streaming service later this year that will include more than 10,000 hours of on-demand programming from Viacom’s extensive library of content going back several decades.

Bob Bakish told investors at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco last week that Viacom’s plans to launch a service at least as large as CBS’ All Access Pass began in 2016 when the company quietly started to pull back on licensing its content to third party streaming services to build an attractive menu of options for its own streaming service.

Viacom has extensive media and cable holdings, including Paramount Pictures and Paramount Television, which has been in the television show production business since 1967. Viacom’s cable networks are also household names, including BET, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, and TV Land. The service is expected to contain a deep catalog of shows from these and other cable networks under the Viacom umbrella.

“It’s going to be significant, and it’s going to also be differentiated from what’s in the marketplace today,” said Viacom chief financial officer Wade Davis, adding that it was only possible because “we kind of built and husbanded [our] library to be able to use for our own strategic purposes.”

Analysts expect the service will include a mobile app and desktop viewing options and will be ad-supported. Similar services generally sell for around $5-6 a month, but Viacom has been purposely vague about the exact terms and pricing of the service.

The news did not seem to interest investors as much as recent developments about a possible merger between Viacom and CBS, which theoretically could mean a merger of the future Viacom streaming service into the CBS All Access Pass.

As Discovery Communications completes its $11.9 billion acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive Inc., the newly supersized basic cable network powerhouse will lay the foundation to launch its own online video mini-bundle of all 18 Discovery and Scripps networks, along with on-demand options, for as little as $6 a month.

The new service, to be branded collectively as “Discovery” will include programming from:

Discovery

Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Oprah Winfrey Network, Velocity, Science, Discovery Family, American Heroes Channel, Destination America, Discovery Life, Discovery en Español (Spanish), and Discovery Familia (Spanish).

Scripps

Cooking Channel, DIY Network, Food Network, Great American Country, HGTV, and Travel Channel.

The package is being developed as a defensive move to fight the ongoing erosion of subscribers that are cord-cutting traditional cable television. Discovery has lost 5% of its viewers in the U.S. in the last quarter alone, because many customers are moving to on-demand services like Netflix combined with over-the-air stations.

The newly enlarged Discovery is now the largest provider of non-fiction basic cable programming in the country. A combination of instructional programming popular on Scripps’ networks is expected to fit well with the reality and documentary programming popular on most Discovery networks. Although frequently bundled with alternative cable television streaming services, those services typically lack a deep on-demand library of content.

In order to drive subscriptions, Discovery’s streaming service is expected to be budget priced and include a large library of on-demand content, possibly including programming from other networks not owned by Discovery down the road.

The combined company also hopes to leverage as much savings out of the merger as possible. That will likely mean extensive job cuts at both companies. Discovery and Scripps together have more than 11,000 employees, including 600 ad sales people working for Discovery and 500 ad sales people working for Scripps.

Discovery will shut down its headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., and open a new headquarters in New York for both Discovery and Scripps employees. But Discovery will maintain Scripps’ headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn., as an “operations headquarters” for back-office work.

The two companies also have a significant international presence with more than three billion viewers worldwide, but the company plans to downsize international studios and consolidate production facilities in the United States and Poland, where Scripps owns  TVN, a Polish broadcast television network that favors reality TV programming and is seen in 90% of the country.

At some point, some of the 18 networks may be consolidated. Discovery executives note it now has two channels devoted to food and cooking — Food Network and the Cooking Channel.

Discovery’s niche will continue to be non-fiction programming, even as much of the rest of the industry is rapidly moving towards scripted series. Discovery executives point out that an hour of a scripted TV series now costs an average of $5 million, while an hour of reality programming produced in-house costs about $400,000. Scripps’ networks have managed to produce their shows for even less, recorded in pre-constructed studios that do not require remote location filming.” As far as Discovery is concerned, sticking with nonfiction programming is the right choice.

“We look at that [scripted] side and we say, ‘Good luck with that,’” said Discovery CEO David M. Zaslav. “That’s not what we do. We don’t do red carpet.”

Discovery Communications and Scripps Networks promote their merger and their global networks in this company-produced spot. (2:47)

Cheyenne Mayor Marion Orr

An effort to pass legislation that would award state grants to help rural Wyoming communities get high-speed internet was dead on arrival as far as telecom industry lobbyists were concerned.

So they “fixed it” with a secret substitute bill quietly written by the state’s telecom companies.

The replacement legislation effectively turns the state grant program into a fund for the state’s dominant telecom companies — CenturyLink and Charter Communications.

Stop the Cap! has learned the replacement bill gives high priority to eliminating potential competition by blocking funding for communities to establish their own public broadband alternatives to the phone and cable company if those companies already offer service anywhere inside the community.

The bill also seeks to define the Wyoming government’s involvement in broadband as a non-adversarial partnership with the telecom industry, according to Wyoming Senate Minority Leader Chris Rothfuss (D-District 9).

Under the substitute bill, Rothfuss said the telecom industry will now have a say over how the state awards grant funds. The industry is concerned tax dollars could be given to their competitors to offer service in communities where CenturyLink and Charter already provide modest service. But nothing in the bill would keep either company from collecting state funds for themselves, to expand broadband into unserved areas.

The attempt to switch the bills during a state senate committee meeting was met with surprise and outrage by Cheyenne Mayor Marion Orr.

“I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn industry completely re-wrote proposed broadband legislation to their favor as a ‘substitute bill’ in legislative committee today,” Orr wrote on her Facebook page on Feb. 19. “The substitute bill is substantially different than the original bill. And it wasn’t posted online or anywhere for anyone except insiders to have access to. CenturyLink and Spectrum are bullies. It’s wrong, and they are hurting Cheyenne and other Wyoming communities from gaining affordable access.”

The committee working on the bill may have hoped to switch the bills without notice, but Orr was having none of that.

“As soon as I realized the committee was working a different version that none of us had access to – I spoke up,” she said. “The committee set it aside and will hear it again tomorrow night. This is NOT good governance and the committee realized it. I will stay on this. Guaranteed.”

The substitute bill appears to have subsequently passed and is still facing review by the state legislature.

Orr remains furious Wyoming’s telecom companies that have not delivered on ubiquitous, affordable broadband will now have more power than ever to determine who gets service, who pays to extend service, and what companies can provide it.

“It’s as important as turning on electricity, it’s as important as turning on a tap and having water, it’s an absolute must if we’re going to grow,” Orr said.

Cablevision customers get very attractive promotions in the highly competitive northeastern United States, while Suddenlink customers in more rural areas pay more.

The majority of Cablevision and Suddenlink broadband customers want speeds of 100 Mbps or greater from the Altice-owned cable operators, and average monthly data usage by those customers is now reaching 200 GB per month.

Those statistics were part of a quarterly financial results presentation by Altice USA executives about how the company is doing in the United States.

Altice’s cable holdings include Cablevision, serving a generally affluent customer base in and around the New York City area where Verizon FiOS is its biggest competitor, and Suddenlink, which serves in less competitive markets where local economies are often challenged and phone company DSL still has a significant presence.

Regardless of whether customers receive broadband from Cablevision or Suddenlink, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei made it clear consumers want faster internet service and are consuming exponentially more data than ever before.

Goei said Altice will continue to increase internet speeds over its existing hybrid fiber-coax network (HFC) even as it builds out its fiber to the home replacement network in some areas. At least 95% of Cablevision customers can now subscribe to 400 Mbps broadband on the company’s legacy HFC network. Around 72% of Suddenlink customers can get similar speeds today. Gigabit speed is available to 29% of Altice USA customers.

Goei said 90% of new Cablevision and Suddenlink customers now choose internet plans featuring 100 Mbps or faster broadband. The average data use of those customers “is now reaching about 200 GB” per month, Goei reported. For customers on HFC systems, Goei said the maximum speed Altice’s implementation of DOCSIS 3 can support is around 600 Mbps, depending on how many customers are sharing the connection. As customers transition to fiber service in the northeast, faster speeds are planned. In fact, Goei wants Cablevision to offer speeds even faster than Verizon FiOS, its chief competitor.

“In terms of the speed capabilities, we’ll have the ability to do higher speeds than the competition,” Goei said.

Altice USA’s fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment is “well underway” in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, with plans to connect several hundred thousand customers to the new network starting later this year. Goei told investors Altice was accelerating the rollout this year with the hope of further reducing network and customer operation costs related to servicing the older coaxial network.

Cablevision and Suddenlink will gradually be rebranded as Altice, and the company has begun familiarizing customers with the new brand name in various ways, including the rollout of its new deluxe set-top box, called Altice One.

“This is our new entertainment platform with an all in one box, including TV, internet, Wi-Fi, integrated apps such as Netflix and a voice activated remote control,” said Goei. “The service includes an improved Wi-Fi experience […] as many TV boxes double up as Wi-Fi repeaters around the home. This is a key part of our strategy of enhancing the customer experience and we’ll have the capacity for ongoing upgrades and the addition of new apps as they become available.”

But that new platform comes at a cost. Currently, Cablevision customers can pay as much as $10 for each set-top box and $5 for a cable modem. Altice One is regularly priced at $25 a month — $10 more for a customer that has one television set-top box and cable modem. That makes Altice’s box among the most costly in the cable industry. The company is trying to hide the cost of its box by bundling it into promotions targeting price sensitive new customers.

In fact, the cost of service is increasingly becoming a factor, especially for Suddenlink customers. Over the last two years, Altice has been “harmonizing” Suddenlink’s rate plans, which used to be set based on the technical capabilities and performance of each cable system. Goei said Suddenlink comprised “five or six different customer bases” — each served by cable systems with different capabilities and rate plans. In the last two years, Suddenlink customers have been introduced to new rate plans, and some are paying considerably higher rates than before, especially for equipment and surcharges.

“All of that activity was probably more than we ever wanted to or anticipated as harmonizing all the different variables is not that easy,” Goei said. “And so we made a very concerted effort to not implement a usual or industry like price increase at the end of 2017, given all the various changes that happened over both customer bases as we harmonized them.” But Goei added the reprieve from rate hikes won’t last forever, promising a “rate event” strategy sometime this year, different from rate changes in past years.

Altice is emphasizing the progress it is making boosting internet speeds at its Cablevision and Suddenlink cable systems.

What Suddenlink and Cablevision charge for service is very dependent on what the competition is offering in Altice’s various markets. Goei paradoxically noted that some of the most attractive rates go to customers living in the most affluent areas of the New York Tri-State Area because of intense competition from Verizon FiOS. Prices have remained so low historically that, in Goei’s view, “it makes it very difficult for third parties to come into these markets” and compete with attractive offers that can match Cablevision. That also explains why Cablevision customers do not deal with data caps while Suddenlink customers often do.

Goei

Conversely, in Suddenlink service areas where less capable competitors exist, prices can be higher and service is considered less affordable. As a result, financial analysts have noted Suddenlink’s broadband growth has been anemic since Altice bought the company, presumably because would-be customers cannot afford the service or have chosen a more economic package sold by the phone company, even if it less capable.

Goei promised Altice would be more “nimble” in the future about targeting pricing in different service areas, taking current conditions on the ground into account when setting rates.

In more general terms, Altice is dealing with the same challenges most cable operators are facing these days. Cord-cutting continues to result in reduced numbers of video subscribers. The company also recently endured a multi-week programming dispute with Starz that cost the company video subscribers in the Cablevision service area. The dispute eventually ended with a new multi-year affiliation agreement that allows Altice systems to carry Starz and Starz Encore networks, on-demand services, and online access for several years.

But Altice clearly sees broadband as its key product going forward, which is why the company is upgrading its Cablevision and Suddenlink systems to support faster internet speeds.