Comcast initially announced its 2Gbps broadband service would be available in May.

Three Comcast customers have told Stop the Cap! the cable company has informed them their wait to sign up for 2Gbps service will be a bit longer than planned.

“First it was May, then June, and now I’m being told ‘sometime in July,’ at least for Comcast’s central division, and even then they were not sure,” reports our reader Bruce Nuñez in Atlanta. That same answer was also received by Tom Davis who contacted Comcast this morning about the service.

“They still won’t release any information about anticipated installation costs, although the representative was fairly certain there would be a charge, and they won’t tell anyone the monthly price either,” said Davis. “The representative did tell me it was safer to assume the service will premiere in July and not hold out for June.”

A third potential customer in Miami was also given a vague availability date of “sometime in July” after being told there was no longer a scheduled launch date in June because Comcast wanted to simultaneously launch the service in several cities at once, and there were unspecified delays.

Comcast had previously announced the service would launch sometime in May. While not ready to actually provide the service, Comcast has been busy promoting markets where Gigabit Pro will eventually be available:

(Image: DSL Reports)

• California: Chico, Fresno, Marysville/Yuba City, Merced, Modesto, Monterey, Sacramento, Salinas, San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara County, Stockton, Visalia
• Colorado: Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, Longmont, Loveland
• Florida: Jacksonville, Miami
• Georgia: Atlanta
• Illinois: Chicago
• Indiana: Northwest Indiana suburbs near Chicago
• Minnesota: Minneapolis, St. Paul
• Oregon: Portland
• Tennessee: Chattanooga, Knoxville
• Texas: Houston
• Utah: Salt Lake City
• Washington: Everett, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma

Customers will have to live within one-third of a mile of existing Comcast fiber infrastructure to qualify for the service.

Initially leaked price information seemed to indicate Comcast was planning to sell the service for $300 a month. At that price, Comcast will likely limit customer demand. Comcast’s Metro Internet service, offering 505Mbps, has been priced at around $400 a month. But to sign up, one must agree to pay a $250 installation and $250 activation fee. The service also is provided on contract, with a very steep $1,000 early termination fee.

Customers of Lithuania’s Teo are getting a free speed upgrade — from 500Mbps before to 600Mbps now — on the company’s fiber to the home network. They are also paying less than half the price of what you pay for 15Mbps.

“Internet bandwidth is constantly increasing and high-speed becomes a market norm,” said Teo’s Nerijus Ivanauskas. “Therefore, we see that the added value that customers receive from purchasing a basic service becomes an increasingly important factor when choosing a service provider.”

Lithuanians have several choices for broadband service and price competition has kept broadband speeds faster than what North Americans typically receive, at a fraction of the price. Fiber to the home service is increasingly common in populated areas and is very affordable. Budget-minded customers happy with 100/100Mbps Internet access can get it from Teo for less than $13.50 a month.

Teo’s fiber network passes 837,000 households as of the first quarter of this year. That represents almost 70% of Lithuania. Lithuania was already well ahead of the United States and Canada, with an average broadband speed of 45.11Mbps — 4th place in the European Union and 9th fastest country in the world. Teo also leads the world in fast Wi-Fi. More than 3,000 Teo hotspots serve up speeds averaging 15.4Mbps to every connected client.

As broadband speeds continue to soar in Lithuania, Internet Service Providers have been forced to offer extras to customers to compete. Teo offers 300GB of free cloud storage space, free anti-virus protection, and special parental controls to help protect children from adult content.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Teo Internet Speed Lithuania 6-2015.mp4[/flv]

A Teo advertisement showing off its fiber broadband speeds, ubiquitous free Wi-Fi network, anti-virus and child protection features. (0:45)

Wireless World of Emerson

A Verizon Wireless salesman that left a voicemail message offering a customer a new service plan that could save her money forgot to hang up the phone when he finished his message and broke into song singing, “Lies, lies, lies, selling lies” while criticizing his co-workers for reneging on the savings he promises.

“David” from the “Verizon Wireless Store” called Kristin Capone because she had evidently bought a phone from him last year.

“I’m just calling my customers letting them know that earlier this month there were changes in the price plan and there is a chance I can save you money,” David offered.

After thanking her for her time, the employee at Wireless World of Emerson, a “Premium Verizon Dealer” in Emerson, N.J., did not bother to hang up, and had some choice words for Capone and his co-workers that Capone shared on YouTube.

“Lies! Lies! Lies!,” David sang. “Selling lies. Can’t save her a f@@@ing dime. Come in, we’ll save you some money. Just like that. She comes in, sees to one of you guys. You guys look in and say, oh no, there’s nothing we can do and then I end up looking like a dou@@e and then she won’t want to buy.”

“David” seems to acknowledge his bad attitude at the end of the message.

“I’m being a crabby car salesman.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Crabby Verizon Salesman Forgets to Hang Up.mp4[/flv]

A public relations headache for Verizon Wireless as one of its “premium dealers” decides to dismiss promises of savings as “selling lies.” (Warning: Contains profanity.) (1:42)

John Malone’s Liberty Global has bought out Puerto Rico’s second biggest cable television operator — Choice Cable TV — and will convert its customers to Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico.

Liberty joined Searchlight Capital Partners to close the $272.5 million purchase, which will make Liberty Puerto Rico’s largest cable company, passing more than one million homes and serving about 750,000 customers.

Liberty put $267.5 million of the purchase on its credit card, using debt borrowing from another Malone-controlled entity — Liberty Cablevision — to fund most of the deal. Liberty Global contributed just $10.2 million in equity and its partner Searchlight kicked in $6.8 million in equity.

The deal gives Malone’s company a total cable monopoly on the island. Choice Cable was the last standing cable operator not owned by Liberty, and served customers in western, southern, and central Puerto Rico. Choice itself consolidated several independent cable operators, including Cable TV Northwest (Aguadilla), Dom’s Cable TV (San Germán), Cablevision Mayaguez and TelePonce Cable TV. Now it has been consolidated itself.

Choice Cable used to offer service in these Puerto Rican communities. Most of the rest of the island is served by Liberty Cablevision, which will now have a total cable monopoly across the unincorporated U.S. territory.

According to Liberty Global, the combined cable company will be expected to generate at least $390 million in annual revenue. If it doesn’t, rate increases could be on the way. Channel changes have already been introduced.

Liberty Puerto Rico added 18 new channels to the Choice Cable lineup at no extra cost. The Choice Pak package includes the new channels: AMC, AXS TV, beIN in Spanish and English, Cablevision, Disney Jr., Fox Sports 1, FX, Lifetime Real Women and PBS Kids. The Top Choice package will include: Crime & Investigation, DIY, Esquire, Fox Sports 2, History in Spanish, IFC, Military History and NBA TV.

But several other channels will be dropped: MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Spike, TV Land and Palladia HD. These Viacom-owned channels were discontinued last year by Liberty in a dispute over programming fees.

Liberty intends to offer up to 120/4Mbps Internet speeds, over 100 HD channels (352 channels total), and a “better balance of English and Spanish language networks” to current Choice customers.

Verizon Voice Link

The Communications Workers of America today claimed Verizon is refusing to repair broken landlines and is once again trying to steer customers to a controversial wireless landline replacement Verizon calls Voice Link.

“Verizon is systematically abandoning the legacy network and as a consequence the quality of service for millions of phone customers has plummeted,” Bob Master, CWA’s political director for the union’s northeastern region, told the Wall Street Journal.

The CWA will file public information requests this week with state regulators in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania seeking more detailed information about how Verizon is utilizing Voice Link.

Stop the Cap! has received several messages from Verizon customers over the last six months, most in New York City, that were offered Voice Link as a temporary solution to ongoing landline service problems including no dial tone, intermittently failing lines, and those with crosstalk or static problems.

“It is crazy how long Verizon can take to fix a phone line in Manhattan,” wrote our reader Helen. “The problems started in February and we lost service for what turned out to be almost a month. We had four broken repair appointments and every date they promised it would be fixed it wasn’t. Can you imagine a whole month without a phone line?”

Helen tells us that Verizon started leaving messages on her voicemail apologizing for the problems, but offered Voice Link, a wireless landline replacement in the interim.

“At least it was something I told my husband, but he didn’t like the idea because Verizon would probably forget about us after putting it in,” she said. “I won the argument but we lost in the end because Voice Link never worked properly.”

Helen complained Voice Link made phone calls difficult to understand and often her phone didn’t ring when calls came in.

“Everyone sounded like they were underwater and it was hard to understand people,” she said. “Callers would tell me they heard five rings when calling me, but I only heard one, if that.”

“We switched to Time Warner Cable phone service and it was installed fast,” she said. “But then the fax machine wouldn’t work right so we still need Verizon after all.”

Helen’s apartment building is not yet wired for FiOS because of problems the building management allegedly had with Verizon technicians in the past. She is willing to sign up, but thinks Verizon is not doing itself any favors treating customers badly when their old landlines fail.

“It makes you think how long it will take them to show up if a rat chews through a fiber cable next year.”

The fact Verizon offers Voice Link to customers while phone repairs go uncompleted for extended periods worries the CWA, who accused Verizon of “steering” customers to the wireless replacement.

Verizon spokesman Rich Young says about 13,000 customers have decided to keep Voice Link as a permanent solution to their landline woes and have never gone back to their old copper service.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon Voice Link A Reliable Alternative.mp4[/flv]

Verizon calls its Voice Link wireless landline replacement a reliable alternative in this promotional video produced in 2013. (2:24)

Thomas MacNabb, Verizon’s director of operations, also defends Voice Link, claiming it represents Verizon giving customers the best possible service when weather-related outages arise.

But retired AT&T executive W. Kenneth Lindhorst counters Voice Link is no upgrade, relying on old 1990s technology, and does not work with credit card machines, faxes, security and home medical monitoring, or wireless data.

“They come in with the implication that they are upgrading services in the neighborhood. They do not tell you that they are switching from a regulated basic to an unregulated service,” Lindhorst said. “They don’t like to be regulated by government. They don’t like their customers to be protected by government.”

Lindhorst is part of Don’t Hang Up On New Jersey, a group fighting Verizon’s efforts to replace Superstorm Sandy-damaged telephone lines with Voice Link. Two bills in the New Jersey legislature: A2459/S278 are seeking a one year moratorium on Verizon replacing damaged copper wiring with any alternative technology, including wireless, until further studies can be done.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon Voice Link Hanging Up On NJ.mp4[/flv]

Verizon Voice Link is “hanging up on New Jersey” according to a consumer advocacy group. An interview with retired AT&T executive W. Kenneth Lindhorst suggests Verizon wants to use the service to escape regulatory oversight. (2:00)