You’ve been flee¢ed

It’s time for some more Big Cable Fairy Tales, brought to you by the well-paid lawyers, lobbyists, and lackey sock puppets paid to tell regulators life is only worth living when you approve a colossal merger.

Kids, gather round for tonight’s prescient story of vague promises and non-committal commitments.

Once upon a time in the forest there was a big, bad old Mr. Wolf (better known to his friends as TWC) that had a nasty habit occupying a nearby bridge to grandmother’s house and charged humongous fees to cross it. One of his best customers was Little Red Riding Hood, who depended on the no longer state of the art bridge to cut her travel time to grandmother’s house by 75%. Every trip proved an aggravation for our Red. It was costly, closed to traffic far more often than it should, and was policed by that pesky wolf and his “take it or leave it” attitude.

One Sunday in January, an angry crowd had gathered, reading a notice tacked to a nearby tree. In small print, it was titled, “Toll Reconsideration Notification.”

The notice explained increased bridge beautification and maintenance expenses necessitated an annual toll adjustment. But no worries, it would amount to about the cost of one jar of jam in Red’s basket.

“If you bought it at Whole Foods,” muttered Hood to your eminent narrator.

(Last year’s toll hike was “less than a box of cookies,” the year before that was “a tin of tea.” Three years ago it was the cost of Red’s basket. Next year, we think she would do better just handing over her purse.)

This year one trip across the bridge would cost $7.50. If you bought a wolf-approved, bundled picnic basket at the gift store while on your journey, it would drop that toll to $6. The wolf told complainers that was evidence most would never have to pay that new price, so the toll hike was minimal. But the people remained suspicious. (There were stories this wolf also had a tendency to occasionally feast on customers when nobody was looking, but his lawyers denied it.)

Despite the bridge toll inflation and John Walsh looking for missing travelers, our Red knew if she wanted to get to grandmother’s house this week, she had to use the bridge, nefarious wolf or not. The only other bridge – run by old man Frank Bison, fell into the river last winter and he doesn’t think it is worth spending a lot of money to build a new one. Despite offers to take customers across in his leaky canoe, most decide to pass.

Mr. Bison

Mr. Wolf made a handsome profit every quarter charging tolls to travelers. This fact did not escape the attention of the head of the Sheep Consortium in the next valley over. For years, the Consortium felt under-appreciated. Their adventures were rarely told, because few people cared. The wolf had a better story, and anyway it was hard to respect the sheep after they overspent on their watchdog operation and bankrupted themselves for a time.

“That was so yesterday,” defended Dr. Flee¢e, the head of the Consortium. “This is a new sunny day.”

Or so he claimed. Out of view, Flee¢e paced a nearby paddock night after night, unable to sleep knowing that damn wolf got all the attention and a heckuva lot more toll revenue than he was getting.

So one night, Dr. Flee¢e and his friends paid $10 million dollars to the Magic Sparkle Pony grazing down by the investment bank to find a win-win solution for both the sheep and the wolf (but mostly the sheep, shhh.) The pony looked up, tilted his head briefly, and said just one word: SYNERGY. A cacophony of gratitude rose from the valley and gosh darn it, exclaimed Dr. Flee¢e, wouldn’t you know the silly pony had the answer? A merger! The wolf’s costs would drop, the sheep would finally be able to tap into a big piece of that toll operation, and only by working together would Little Red Riding Hood get the benefits of their new relationship:

1. The ratty old bridge would be fully painted.
2. The wolf promised to go vegetarian for up to three years.
3. Little Red Riding Hood would be given a new basket (imported from Laos).

“Hey, wait a minute,” asked one of the sheep. “Didn’t the Three Little Pigs try this last year? They had more money than we do and some of them were turned into bacon after that surprising storm blew their house down.”

“But don’t you see the Magic Sparkle Pony solved that for us too?” responded another. “All we have to say is we’re not pigs and that counts for something. Besides, who doesn’t love sheep? This is going to work out fine.”

But there were still problems, especially with Ms. Hood and her fellow travelers.

It seems the Consortium didn’t promise Ms. Hood or anyone else would pay less on those trips to see grandma. They only promised the journey would be prettier and less confusing. Gone was the $7.50 toll, replaced with the all-new Flee¢ePa$$™ offering trips across the bridge bundled with: a 24/7 travel hotline, travel advice, books on travel, songs about travel, a coffee mug with a picture of Dr. Flee¢e traveling to his castle in Scotland, and the aforementioned Laotian wicker basket to cram it all into, for just $50 a month.

“Is this one of those Dr. Seuss tales that you have to be on something to appreciate?” asked Red. “I don’t drink coffee, nobody reads books anymore, and if I need travel advice I’ll ask someone I know. I don’t need all those things so why do I have to pay $50 instead of $5? Wait, who is paying for that castle?”

“Because it’s simpler, don’t you see,” said Dr. Flee¢e, eavesdropping in the corner. “We are going to be a different kind of bridge operator committed to creating jobs, offering the most innovative products and preserving this bridge.”

“For $50 a month,” coolly replied an exasperated Ms. Hood. “Stephen King wrote this, didn’t he? I have a better idea. We’re moving grandma to Chattanooga. They have high-speed rail.”

Press “1” for inconvenience.

At least half of the country would switch their cable, telephone, or satellite company in a matter of days after a bad customer service experience, if they could.

[24]7’s newly published 2016 Customer Engagement Index surveyed 3,500 customers globally, including 1,200 U.S. respondents, to understand what drives customer behaviors. The survey quickly identified cable and satellite providers among the worst offenders, and for good reason. Customer satisfaction scores for telecom companies continue to rest at the bottom of the barrel.

The survey found almost half were ready to bolt after a single bad experience dealing with customer service, whether it was with a dead-end interactive voice response menu that took them nowhere, to long hold times, to being asked the same questions over and over again as their call is transferred, to unresponsive customer service agents that never resolved the issue to a customer’s satisfaction.

Millennials increasingly prefer to work with self-service options and tolerate a ponderous experience with telephone-based customer service less. Having a website or app that can manage your account is well-appreciated by a growing number of customers that dread having to call anyone to resolve a problem.

“The way customers engage with brands has dramatically shifted, yet many enterprises’ approach to customer service and sales is stuck in yesterday’s paradigm,” [24]7 founder and CEO PV Kannan said in a statement. “For this reason, it’s more important than ever for brands to be where their customers are, and allow them to engage on their own terms. Companies that fail to prioritize the customer experience risk falling behind.”

Right now cable and satellite companies are failing a lot of their customers, scoring lowest with only a 59% customer satisfaction score. Internet providers only score marginally better at 63%.

Anger at poor service has led to 47% of consumers saying that they would take their business to a competitor within one day (if price and products are of equal value), while 79% say they would do it within one week. Millennials and GenX customers are less patient than Baby Boomers and those in the Greatest Generation.

Lucky for telecom companies many customers don’t have anywhere else to take their business. For most, finding a provider offering at least 25Mbps broadband that isn’t the cable company is impossible. Many phone companies don’t offer competing cable television and broadband is a problem if you subscribe to satellite TV. That may explain why many Comcast customers don’t believe the cable company is trying hard enough to improve customer service. They don’t have to.

CenturyLink is planning to trial usage caps on its broadband service later this year, not to reduce congestion or to bank the extra money for service upgrades, but to boost revenue and profits.

Stewart Ewing, chief financial officer at CenturyLink, told Wall Street analysts the company was on board with usage caps and usage billing primarily because its biggest competitor (Comcast) is already implementing a similar program in many of its markets. It’s that kind of “competition” many customers say they could do without.

“Regarding the metered data plans; we are considering that for second half of the year,” Ewing told investors on a morning conference call. “We think it is important and our competition is using the metered plans today and we think that exploring those starts and trials later this year is our expectation.”

No details about the test markets or range of usage allowances were made available by Ewing, but CenturyLink is under pressure by Wall Street to improve its revenue after raising prices and tightening credit standards on its customers. The combined impact of rate hikes and a tighter credit qualification policy led CenturyLink to lose 22,000 broadband customers during the last quarter, many who simply stopped paying the bill.

CenturyLink has been under pressure by Wall Street to put usage caps and usage pricing on its broadband service for over a year.

David Barden from Bank of America called data caps “an opportunity” for CenturyLink to rake in more dollars from customers by using misleading pricing to trick customers.

Post

“We have been seeing a lot of the cable companies experimenting with data caps and metering higher-end usage,” Barden told CenturyLink executives on the conference call. “It seems like the FCC is not pushing back on this and it feels like it could be a big opportunity for telcos to, if nothing else, price underneath the cable umbrella and start to raise rates from high-end users.”

In plain English, Barden wants companies like CenturyLink to make customers believe they are getting a better deal from a lower price, at least until customers actually use the service. Then, the rate increases from usage caps and overlimit fees begin.

Glen Post, CEO of CenturyLink, is still committed to believing CenturyLink is in a good position to add broadband customers, despite the forthcoming trials of usage caps and overlimit fees. He defines 40Mbps broadband from CenturyLink as the speed that will “address most of our customers’ actual needs.”

CenturyLink now has 940,000 households connected to its Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON), many for its Prism TV service. Another 490,000 businesses also have access to CenturyLink’s GPON network, primarily for broadband. Post claims more than 30% of the company’s service area is now served with broadband speeds of 40Mbps or greater.

In 2016, CenturyLink expects to spend $1.2 billion on upgrades for its broadband network and capacity. In comparison, in 2015 CenturyLink spent $1 billion repurchasing shares of its own stock and another $1 billion on dividend payouts – both to benefit shareholders.

At present, CenturyLink has around a 15% market share in its GPON-enabled markets (the company didn’t say what its market share was where legacy copper wire infrastructure still dominates). Post believes that gives the phone company enormous room to grow, assuming its customers can pass credit checks and do not mind their broadband service data-capped. Like many phone companies looking for the biggest return on investment, Post noted CenturyLink will pay extra attention to wiring Multiple Dwelling Units (MDUs) — apartment buildings, condos, etc. — where the company can bring fiber service at a lower cost than wiring each home and business.

Kinzinger

Republican-sponsored H.R. 2666 — the “No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act” — is drawing opposition from House Democrats because the measure, if it becomes law, could grant cable and telephone companies broad permanent exemption from oversight and consumer protection laws.

The bill, introduced last summer by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), consists of a single sentence:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Communications Commission may not regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet access service (as defined in the rules adopted in the Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order that was adopted by the Commission on February 26, 2015 (FCC 15–24)).

Eshoo

Democrats worry despite the brevity of the bill, its language is broad and sweeping, and could be interpreted by the courts to grant deregulation and freedom from oversight to telecommunications providers that already rank at the bottom of customer satisfaction scores. It would also undercut the FCC’s reclassification of broadband from an information service to a telecommunications service, subject to Title II regulations, which gave the FCC increased authority to oversee the broadband industry.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has signaled her likely opposition to the Republican bill, noting the proposed law could “eviscerate the FCC’s authority to protect consumers against truth in billing practices and discriminatory data caps; to ensure broadband availability through [the Universal Service Fund] and E-Rate; to address rate-related issues in merger reviews; to ensure enforcement against paid prioritization; and other essential consumer protections.”

Several Democrats on the House Communications Subcommittee are introducing amendments that would likely keep Republican language prohibiting the FCC from directly regulating broadband prices, but also protect the power of the FCC to regulate billing practices, data caps and usage pricing, Net Neutrality, universal service requirements, merger reviews, and discriminatory and/or unfair business practices.

The Democrats are likely to have an uphill battle in a Republican-controlled House. Constituents may have more influence expressing their opposition to H.R. 2666 by reaching out to Rep. Kinzinger and the 18 Republican co-sponsors of the measure:

• Rep. Latta, Robert E. [R-Ohio]
• Rep. Bilirakis, Gus M. [R-Fla.]
• Rep. Barton, Joe [R-Tex.]
• Rep. Lance, Leonard [R-N.J.]
• Rep. Shimkus, John [R-Ill.]
• Rep. Blackburn, Marsha [R-Tenn.]
• Rep. Olson, Pete [R-Tex.]
• Rep. Pompeo, Mike [R-Kan.]
• Rep. Scalise, Steve [R-La.]
• Rep. Cramer, Kevin [R-N.D.]
• Rep. Collins, Chris [R-N.Y.]
• Rep. Long, Billy [R-Mo.]
• Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-Ky.]
• Rep. Johnson, Bill [R-Ohio]
• Rep. Ellmers, Renee L. [R-N.C.]
• Rep. Walden, Greg [R-Ore.]
• Rep. Upton, Fred [R-Mich.]
• Rep. Allen, Rick W. [R-Ga.]

Despite claims satellite broadband has improved, our readers respectfully disagree:

“Most people don’t know what data caps really are until they’ve had satellite based Internet service where the bandwidth is shared,” Scott S. reminds Stop the Cap! He’s a subscriber of Exede, a satellite broadband provider powered by the ViaSat satellite platform serving about 687,000 residential customers nationwide.

Online life can be a lot worse when you are stuck with satellite-based Internet access:

• “I am only allowed to have 10GB per month total for everything and have a 12/3Mbps service. Anything over that and they either cap your flow or give you substantially lower bandwidth speed.
• “You can’t go online with more than three devices (including your phones).
• “You can forget Netflix or watching any shows online.
• “You can forget playing ANY video games online.
• “You can forget taking any college courses online without service interruptions (which I am).”

“And they still charge you as much as other ISPs do (at least $60/month) that provide no data caps and a MUCH faster speed,” Scott writes.

Exede offers most customers plans with 10, 18, or 30GB of usage per month. About one-third of the country, typically the most rural regions in the western U.S., can now choose faster plans at speeds nearing 25Mbps because those spot beams are underutilized. But most subscribers get considerably poorer service because about two-thirds of ViaSat’s residential satellite access beams are full. Despite that, Viasat still managed to find capacity to power in-flight Wi-Fi on JetBlue, Virgin America and some United Airlines aircraft.

Customers who have never had DSL or cable broadband tolerate the slow speeds and low caps better than those that move from an area served by a wired provider. Many of those customers call satellite broadband speed marketing claims “fraudulent” and complain low usage caps make it difficult to impossible to use the Internet to use multimedia content.