With more than one million people in its footprint across western New York, Frontier Communications has the potential of picking up a significant number of new customers and keeping others from leaving with the introduction of its Vantage IPTV service (see our coverage from this spring to learn more about Vantage TV), set to arrive in the Greater Rochester area by the end of this year.

Rochester is Frontier’s largest legacy copper service area by population, encompassing the majority of the 585 area code. Yet for all that history and Rochester’s significant population base, over the last 15 years Frontier has owned the former Rochester Telephone, upgrades to its copper wire infrastructure have been modest. Significant segments of Frontier’s service area in Rochester still cannot support greater than 3-6Mbps DSL because the company has proportionally underinvested in network upgrades.

That underinvestment has allowed Time Warner Cable (now Charter) to amass a large majority of the residential broadband, phone, and television market in the region. Winning those customers back may be tough without considerable investment in ridding the Rochester area of large segments of copper wiring in place since the 1960s and 1970s. Frontier will be competing against a company that offers broadband speeds starting at 60Mbps and will be discounting its plans, packages and equipment fees for the next few years.

Vantage TV is powered by Frontier’s broadband service and will need more bandwidth than the company can now supply across parts of the three dozen communities it plans to market IPTV in the Greater Rochester area. CEO Dan McCarthy promised to upgrade much of Frontier’s copper network to support speeds of 50Mbps or higher, but that isn’t likely to happen this year in large parts of western New York.

Historically, Frontier has preferred acquiring other companies’ already-built fiber and fiber/copper networks instead of spending the money to build comparable networks from scratch. That is why there is a wide disparity between Frontier’s performance in its acquired FiOS and U-verse territories (Indiana, Pacific Northwest, and Connecticut) and its legacy network (Rochester) and acquired dilapidated copper communities (non-FiOS Verizon acquisition areas, most of West Virginia, etc.)

The Vantage TV announcement underwhelmed local media, with only one television station bothering to cover it. That may be a result of skepticism among area reporters who have had direct past experience using Frontier’s DSL service and share our attitude about Frontier’s press releases: only believe it when you actually see it.

An attempt by CenturyLink to win near-complete deregulation for all of its 108 telephone exchanges in Minnesota has been met with strong objections from the Department of Commerce and the Minnesota Attorney General’s office because CenturyLink couldn’t be bothered to provide enough information to prove its case.

“In essence, a carrier filing a petition [for deregulation must] ‘show its work’ in the initial filing in order to have a complete petition for review,” wrote the Attorney General’s office. “CenturyLink has not shown its work. As a result, any analysis of the merits of the petition is both premature and impossible, given the lack of detail provided in the petition. The filing of the superficial results of analyses performed by the company with no supporting data or workpapers does not allow for any analysis necessary on the merits of the petition. This leaves the commission with a take-it-or-leave-it approach and shuts out other parties’ ability to perform analysis of the petition using the same data set relied upon by the company. Such scant data would not be allowed in any other commission proceeding.”

The two state agencies, in addition to some public interest groups, object to CenturyLink’s claim that since they now serve fewer than 50% of households and competing services are available to at least 60% of customers in each of their exchanges, they should no longer be regulated.

But unlike many other states, Minnesota law requires the burden of proof be met by CenturyLink, and in this case that requires a clear record of evidence of customer losses as a result of direct competition, according to the state agencies.

The Attorney General’s office believes CenturyLink used proprietary data and other unexplained criteria difficult to impossible for independent third parties to verify. The Attorney General complained, “parties must take CenturyLink at its word that its analysis is accurate.”

One requirement mandates that phone companies seeking regulatory relief provide a list of local services offered in each exchange, to verify if competitors are providing a comparable level of service. CenturyLink admitted it winged it, never submitting an actual list of local services but instead a link to its national website.

When asked why the company omitted the list, a company representative told the Office of the Attorney General they didn’t think it was important.

Other examples:

• CenturyLink’s list of exchange areas was developed using proprietary data using an “allocation tool” that requires everyone involved in the case to take CenturyLink at its word the analysis is accurate and complete;
• CenturyLink was required to prove how many competitive providers were available to customers in each exchange. CenturyLink took a short cut, supplying a list of “major” wireless providers and cable companies alleged to be supplying service in the area with no verification or data source to generate the list. For proof of coverage, CenturyLink took screen shots of wireless provider coverage maps used in marketing material, with no proof customers actually get adequate coverage in those areas.
• CenturyLink footnoted in tiny print it was beginning to offer unregulated Voice over IP phone service, but had no customers as of Dec. 31, 2015. It did not say anything about its plans for 2016. Should CenturyLink launch VoIP, they will be able to offer unregulated phone service in Minnesota and elsewhere, possibly negating the need to ask for deregulation.

Earlier this week, CenturyLink filed its response, effectively telling regulators they cannot dismiss the company’s petition based on the complaints from the two state agencies.

“The agencies’ arguments misread the relevant statute, confuse the distinction between completeness and sufficiency, and should be summarily rejected,” CenturyLink argued. “The statute clearly does not contemplate that all issues … must be unequivocally resolved before a petition is deemed complete. If that were the case, there would be no need for the 180 day review period.”

The proceeding is still ongoing, although it was originally supposed to take a maximum of six months.

Viewers hoping to see their last Cialis ad while watching 60 Minutes online now have that option as CBS announces the introduction of a commercial-free plan for its All Access subscription service.

For an extra $4 a month, CBS will remove all online advertising from its current run and new shows.  Those who don’t mind the ads can continue to pay $5.99/month, which includes an ad free experience for older content the network calls CBS Classics. Current CBS programming includes a heavy load of advertising and it is often repetitious. For some, $9.99/month is not too much to pay for the complete removal of commercials.

“The foundation of CBS All Access is not only about giving CBS fans access to more of the content they want, but also giving them more choice in how they watch their favorite CBS programming,” said Marc DeBevoise, president and chief operating officer of CBS Interactive. “The addition of a commercial-free plan gives our subscribers even more ways to customize their CBS viewing experience – from which devices to whether they watch in or out of the home, and now with commercials or without.”

Current subscribers will have the option to move to the commercial-free plan by logging on to their account through CBS.com.

For the commercial-free plan, CBS All Access’s live-streaming offering of local CBS Television stations, available throughout the U.S. in more than 150 markets, will continue to feature the same commercials as the over-the-air broadcast, and select on-demand shows will include promotional interruptions.

CBS All Access is available online at CBS.com, on mobile devices and tablets via the CBS App for iOS, Android and Windows 10, and on Roku Players, Apple TV, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Chromecast, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, with more connected device platforms coming soon.

Comcast has expanded its online video service Xfinity on Campus to 36 new schools, allowing college students who live on campus to watch live and on-demand TV at no cost.

The cable operator pitches the service to universities that are trying to move away from traditional coaxial cable networks and get cable TV wiring out of the dorms. Comcast’s program is essentially an investment for the future. Students exposed to Comcast’s cable TV service might become accustomed to having it, increasing the possibility they will stay with Comcast after they graduate.

Participating colleges set up a Metro Ethernet connection to the Comcast network and agree to support both an on-campus network that can support IPTV and a joint authentication solution that allows students access to the service by logging into their university accounts. The service is only available over the college’s campus network.

Comcast claims the service requires little or no equipment and students use their own devices — IPTV-ready televisions, as well as PC’s, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones to access the content.

New this year is free cloud DVR service, letting each student record up to 20 shows to view later. Comcast has also consolidated the on-campus service with traditional on-demand viewing available to all Comcast customers through the Xfinity TV app.