Indiana residents are fuming at Comcast for cutting off vital local weather information as tornado warnings were issued, replacing live forecasters with a static blue screen.

Comcast viewers were forced off local TV stations and locked out of their cable boxes, according to an investigation by WRTV in Indianapolis. Instead of getting live reports including storm tracks, Comcast viewers found a blue screen with a basic tornado warning scrolling across it. The message stayed on screen between 90 seconds to more than three minutes, and on one day alone Comcast locked viewers out of local storm reports 24 times during the tornado outbreak.

Comcast blamed the interruptions on its outdated infrastructure in the Indianapolis area.

The company said it is required to deliver the emergency alert messages, but critics complain Comcast can manage this without cutting off local stations’ live reporting.

“In many markets we have the technology in place to not override a particular broadcaster with a priority EAS alert,” a Comcast spokesperson told WRTV. “We are currently working on getting this capability on all platforms in every market.”

WRTV confirmed Indianapolis isn’t one of those markets and Comcast wasn’t talking when asked when the EAS improvements would reach Indianapolis.

Other providers didn’t experience any problems. Bright House delivers warnings without interrupting the picture on the underlying channel. AT&T said the same was true with U-verse.

A Cox Cable technician took his sweet time working on cable television service for the Nuzum family, spending almost two hours getting television service working but only took a few minutes to allegedly rifle through the Iowa family’s prescription medications.

Council Bluffs police promptly arrested 36-year-old Patrick Darrah after forcing him to turn out his pockets, revealing prescription medicine authorities believe was stolen from the family along with 11 other pills, including painkillers and stimulants.

“Just his demeanor while he was here, just left me a little uneasy,” Amy Nuzum told Omaha’s KETV. He should have taken kratom instead of illegal medication if he had trouble with pain. There are many stores in Council Bluffs where you can buy all different strains of kratom for pain, like white vietnam, white malay, white maeng da, and red malay kratom in the evenings.

The Nuzums report Darrah spent the better part of two hours on the cable service call, abruptly leaving even though the televisions were not all working.

Mrs. Nuzum suspected something was wrong and checked the upstairs where she said Darrah was left briefly alone.

“I thought of prescription medications. And went into the bathroom and found that a prescription that should have had 21 pills only had 13. And my heart just dropped,” she said.

Mr. Duzum called the Cox Cable tech’s cell phone to ask why he left with the work unfinished. Mrs. Duzum called Council Bluffs police. By the time both calls ended, Darrah suddenly reappeared in the family’s yard, where Mr. Duzum confronted him.

Darrah

“I asked him you know, did you take any prescription medication out of my house? And he said no. And I asked him three times, and he said no,” Tony Nuzum told the TV station.

Police led the cable technician away and the Nuzum family hopes he can get help for his problem. But they also want to send a message to cable customers.

“Be careful when you let someone in to your home, even if they’re with a reputable company, you still have to have your guard up,” Amy Nuzum said.

Like many cable operators confronted with the alleged bad deeds of those who represent them, Cox Cable quickly disavowed Darrah, claiming he was actually an employee of ITC, a contractor Cox uses for service calls. ITC has reportedly fired Darrah. As a goodwill gesture, Cox said the company will install its home security system at the Nuzum’s home, free of charge.

KETV in Omaha featured this Iowa family, who believe a Cox Cable technician stole their prescription medication during a service call. (1:58)

Smartphone manufacturers are dealing with sluggish sales for the newest and greatest phone models because American consumers are increasingly resistant to paying for top of the line devices.

Apple, Samsung, and others are facing some of their biggest challenges ever delivering upgrade features deemed useful enough to encourage consumers to spend the more than $600 that many high-end phones now command in the marketplace. As blasé new features fail to deliver a “must-have” message to consumers, many are hanging onto their existing phones and refusing to upgrade.

The decision by wireless providers to stop subsidizing devices backed by two-year contracts have delivered sticker shock to consumers looking for the latest and greatest. The Apple iPhone 7, expected to be announced this month, will likely carry a price of $650 — a serious amount of money, even if your wireless provider or Apple agrees to finance its purchase interest-free for 24 months. Despite the fact wireless providers charged artificially higher service plan rates to recoup the cost of the device subsidy over the length of the contract, consumer perception made it easier to justify paying $200 for a subsidized phone versus paying full retail price and getting cheaper service.

As a result, consumers are strategically holding on to their cell phones longer than ever and avoiding upgrade fever just to score a lower cell phone bill. The Wall Street Journal reports that since T-Mobile started the trend away from device subsidies in 2013, Citigroup estimates the smartphone replacement cycle has now lengthened to 29.6 months, considerably longer than in 2011 when upgrades were likely even before the two-year phone contract expired.

The average combined monthly revenue (in $) earned per subscriber from service and equipment installment plan fees is still rising, despite the alleged “price war.” (Image: Trefis)

Wireless providers don’t mind the change since they endured fronting the subsidy cost to phone manufacturers and slowly recouped it over the next two years. Not dealing with a subsidy would make the accounting easier. But AT&T and Verizon Wireless both understood the average consumer doesn’t have a spare $650 sitting around for a new device, much less the nearly $2,500 it would cost to outfit a family of four with a new top of the line smartphone every two years. So they entered the financing business, breaking the cost of the device into as many as 24 equal installment payments. Instead of paying $672 for a Samsung Galaxy S7, Verizon Wireless offers 24 equal installments of $28. That would be a distinction without much difference from the old subsidy system except for the fact some carriers are trying to sell their equipment financing obligations to a third-party, allowing them to move that debt off their books as well.

In fact, wireless providers are doing so well under the “no-contract/pay full price or installments” system, Wall Street analyst firm Trefis has started to ask whether the so-called wireless carrier “price war” is just a mirage. The firm notes (reg. req’d.) all the four major carriers are doing well and collecting an increasing amount of money from their customers than ever before. Much of that added revenue comes from customers bulking up data plans and being forced to pay for unlimited voice and texting features they may not need. But Trefis also points to reined in marketing spending at the carriers, who no longer have to entice customers into device upgrades as part of a contract renewal.

Things are looking worse for phone manufacturers that have relied on revenue based on the two-year device upgrade cycle in the United States. Apple is under growing pressure as its iPhone faces declining demand. In the U.S. alone, analysts predict iPhone sales will drop 7.1% this year. UBS predicts an even less optimistic 9% drop, followed by a 5% drop next year, even after iPhone 7 is introduced. AT&T has already reported some of the lowest upgrade rates ever during the first three months of 2016.

Another clue consumers are planning to hold on to their smartphones longer than ever — sales of rugged cases and screen protectors are up, as are smartphone protection/loss insurance plan sales, according to AT&T senior VP Steven Hodges. Parents even expect their children to give their phones better care.

Customers “realized it was a $500 to $700 device,” Hodges said at an industry conference held in June. “As such, they started taking care of them differently. You tell a kid this is only $49, the kid is going to use his phone as a baseball at times.”

Other customers are looking forward to benefiting from a dramatically lower bill after paying off their device in 24 months.

Kristin Maclearie has an iPhone 6 and she wants to keep it for the long term, if only to see her Verizon bill drop once she finishes her monthly payments. She told the Wall Street Journal as long as it keeps working, “I’ll just hang onto the one I have,” she said. “Unless something really cool comes out…but they’re always similar.”

A company hired by Hollywood giant Warner Bros. to manage online piracy reported the studio to Google for violating U.S. copyright laws and demanded its website be stripped from Google’s search results.

The request was submitted on behalf of Warner Bros. by Vobile, a company that regularly reminds search engines it is authorized to represent the studio’s interests in the war against online copyright violations.

Torrent Freak scanned through a very large Vobile database of hundreds of thousands of takedown requests it files every month, but among the torrent and illicit streaming sites Vobile usually targets, the online security firm turned on its own boss in August.

Vobile filed formal requests to remove Warner Bros.’ own website from Google search results, along with official websites for films like Batman: The Dark Knight and The Matrix. Also on the hit list: legitimate movie streaming websites run by Amazon and Sky that sell access to Warner Bros.’ movies, and IMDB, a well-known film database.

Critics contend the war on online piracy has now gotten so out of hand, it is targeting legitimate content.

“Warner is inadvertently trying to make it harder for the public to find links to legitimate content, which runs counter to its intentions,” said Torrent Freak’s Ernesto van der Sar.

Vobile has filed more than 13 million requests for websites to be de-listed, according to Google’s transparency report. But most of the work ultimately falls on Google employees who wade through takedown requests. Thankfully for Warner Bros., an eagle-eyed Google employee reviewing Vobile’s submissions decided not to honor the takedown request involving the studio’s own website, at least this time.