Plateau Wireless customers can expect to be eventually herded to Verizon Wireless’ all or nothing plans as early as 2013.

Verizon Wireless this week announced the acquisition of another regional wireless carrier — Plateau Wireless — formerly owned by the Eastern New Mexico Rural Telephone Cooperative. At risk are the co-op’s innovative and inexpensive calling and unlimited smartphone data plans for customers in communities like Roswell, Carlsbad, Artesia, and Hobbs.

Verizon’s purchase includes the co-op’s cellular, PCS, and AWS wireless spectrum that covers more than 26,000 square miles in eastern New Mexico.

“We are excited to expand our presence and coverage in rural New Mexico and to welcome Plateau Wireless’ customers to the nation’s most reliable network. We believe the strength of our network enables people to live better and stronger lives,” said Andres Irlando, president of Verizon Wireless’ southwest region.

Customers’ bank accounts may not have the strength to withstand the pricing and technology changes Verizon has in store as early as 2013. Plateau’s current GSM network will be dismantled as Verizon converts the network to CDMA for voice service and EV-DO (3G) and LTE (4G) for data services, leaving customers’ current smartphones and handsets useless. Verizon has not said whether it will provide free replacement equipment to Plateau customers at the time of the network conversion.

More importantly, Plateau Wireless’ current service plans, which include numerous options for customers on tight budgets — are destined for the scrap heap as the company unleashes its all-or-nothing contract service plans.

Plateau Wireless was a co-op owned regional wireless provider serving southeastern New Mexico.

The most important service at risk is Plateau’s unlimited data plan. The company charges customers $29.99 a month for unlimited smartphone data when inside Plateau’s home coverage area. Customers on family plans have an even better deal. They can extend unlimited data to every other phone on the account for a flat additional fee of $10/month. For just under $40 a month total, four family members each with their own smartphones or other wireless devices can have unlimited data when bundled with a calling plan starting at $19.99 a month ($9.99 for each additional line).

The same data plan under Verizon Wireless’ Share Everything Plan costs $220 a month for four phones, but it is not unlimited. All four users have to share a collective allowance of just 2GB of data per month.

Remember when your cell phone company offered you calling plans that fit your budget instead of their desired bottom line? Plateau Wireless still does, for the moment:

All Plateau Wireless Plans are eligible for the Family Plan and Data Features. Unlimited text messaging is $4.95 a month. Carryover of unused minutes to future months and free loyal customer minutes available. 

Plateau Wireless’ customers will have to decide for themselves whether Verizon’s acquisition is good or bad news for them.

Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission awarded nearly $9.5 million to Plateau to expand 3G and 4G service in central and southeastern New Mexico over the next three years. Verizon Wireless can use the funds to effectively expand their network in the area at taxpayer expense.

Cable companies are starting to lay the groundwork to support the next generation of HD video — first with 4K, an improvement over today’s HD standard, and eventually 8K Ultra High Definition TV — delivering pictures 16 times better than the current 1080p HD standard and coming close to the level of detail supported by IMAX.

The 8K evolving standard, proposed by Japan’s public broadcaster NHK and dubbed Super Hi-Vision, remains years away, but cable operators are preparing their systems to support 4K UHDTV (3840 x 2160 – 8.3 megapixels)  much sooner.

By the time 8K comes into use, most cable operators will rely entirely on a single broadband pipe to deliver video, Internet access and telephone service. To handle that traffic, and the bandwidth UHDTV demands, providers will have to upgrade their systems to support much faster speeds. A single video channel transmitted in 8K UHDTV requires around 360Mbps.

That makes Google’s decision to construct a gigabit broadband network in Kansas City seem less revolutionary and almost evolutionary, considering how quickly bandwidth demand will increase in the next eight years.

The cable industry is now moving fast to finalize the next version of the DOCSIS standard which supports cable broadband. DOCSIS 3.1 is expected to be introduced Thursday at the Cable-Tec Expo. An initial preview seems to suggest the standard will be backwards-compatible with prior DOCSIS versions — good news for those buying their own cable modems — and will support multi-gigabit speeds, if the cable operator decides to dedicate more of its available bandwidth to broadband.

An essential goal of the cable industry is to match or beat 1Gbps, currently on offer from several fiber to the home service providers and Google. Some operators want even more — up to 10/2Gbps capacity, as they consider future speed needs.

But engineering advancements and innovation fly in the face of bean counters attempting to monetize broadband usage with usage caps and usage-based billing. The industry’s justification for usage caps becomes even more tenuous as it moves to a single pipeline for all of its services and treats its cable TV package differently from Internet traffic. AT&T and Bell are already doing that today with their U-verse and Fibe platforms. Both claim their TV channels move over a different network than traditional Internet, but as costs for both continue to decline, that is becoming a distinction with little difference.

Google and a handful of independent or community-owned broadband networks are largely the only ones calling out the cable industry’s bogus claims that consumers don’t need super fast broadband, usage caps are necessary, and broadband speed upgrades are difficult and too expensive. These new competitors have correctly predicted the exponential growth in bandwidth demand and are prepared for it, even as the industry continues to dismiss their competitors’ networks as unnecessary overkill.

But cable’s hurry to DOCSIS 3.1 tells a different story.

Jeff Baumgartner from Light Reading Cable observed cable executives at Tuesday’s annual Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) conference, where those attending beat the drum for faster and better networks:

[DOCSIS 3.1] will also focus on the quality of cable’s pipe, reduced latency and other smarts designed to help enable a new set of broadband-based services. Cable’s interest in offering 4K HD services, which offer four times the resolution of today’s HD, was an example that was brought up several times during the session.

The cable industry also hopes to shorten the process of creating the specs and having them turn into deployable products. An average generation of DOCSIS has typically taken three to four years.

“We can no longer do that,” said Phil McKinney, the new president and CEO of CableLabs, but didn’t offer a guess on the anticipated cycle for 3.1. “We have to deliver higher and higher performance.”

[…] And 3.1 is also about the almighty dollar as broadband usage continues to climb. Getting costs down “is a key part of Docsis 3.1,” said Cox Communications Inc. EVP and CTO Kevin Hart.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Light Reading NBCU Ultra-HD Demo 10-12.flv[/flv]

Jeff Baumgartner from Light Reading Cable was invited to a demonstration of 8K UHDTV, which will require much faster broadband networks to handle the super high quality video. (3 minutes)

All Time Warner Cable broadband customers in upstate New York, New England, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas will begin paying $3.95 a month to rent the cable modem required to make your $54.99/month Time Warner Cable Internet service work.

The cable company confirmed the charge will apply to all customers in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Binghamton, and beyond effective Nov. 1, joining New York City already paying the modem rental fee as of this week. The fee is gradually being introduced in all Time Warner Cable service areas nationwide.

Signature Home customers and those participating in the company’s trial of discounted Internet for the disadvantaged are exempted.

The new fee represents a 7% rate increase for Internet service, unless customers pay for their own modem.

Time Warner Cable mailed notification postcards to all affected areas this week, so they should begin arriving in mailboxes as soon as today. Southern states including Texas may see the new modem fee in their area as early as December.

“It is strictly a fee for customers who choose to lease their Internet modem from us,” Joli Plucknette-Farmen, the communications manager for Time Warner Cable’s western New York division told the Buffalo News. “As we continue to deploy more and more cable modems, many of these modems need servicing or replacing, get damaged and some are not returned. The monthly lease charge will allow us to service or replace the equipment, provide a better user experience and further enhance our Internet services.”

Stop the Cap! notes Time Warner Cable already assesses a fee ranging from $24-150 for unreturned or damaged cable modem equipment, however.

Phone subscribers who do not have Internet service will escape the fee as long as they avoid signing up for broadband.

Many of the models on the company’s approved modem list are now out of stock at the handful of retailers selling them. Other sellers, particularly on eBay and Amazon Marketplace, have doubled prices to as much as $200 on some popular DOCSIS 3 modems to capitalize on the cable operator’s new fees.

Phillip “I can see the duopoly from my house — why can’t the FCC?” Dampier

The New York Times is pondering whether Americans are paying too much for wireless broadband based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology. A new study now offers proof, noting U.S. customers pay three times as much, on average, for each gigabyte of data in contrast to European consumers.

The UK-based mobile industry group GSM Association offers evidence Americans are not getting the lower wireless broadband prices promised by the more advanced, cost-efficient LTE technology, although customers in other parts of the world are seeing savings.

According to the group’s findings, Verizon Wireless customers effectively pay $7.50 per gigabyte of data over the company’s 4G LTE network. That is three times more expensive than the European average of $2.50/GB, and more than 10 times higher than what Swedes pay: $0.63/GB, cheaper than many wired broadband providers’ overlimit fees.

Verizon Wireless’ Brenda Raney tried to defend the discrepancy, claiming that Verizon offers enhanced value bundles with unlimited voice, text, and mobile hotspot service. Having a data-only plan, Raney told the newspaper, would reduce the cost to $5.50/GB.

That is still more than twice as much as what Europeans pay.

So what is the real reason for the enormous price difference?

The wireless industry regularly claims that the vast expanse of the United States means a much larger investment in wireless technology and infrastructure, notably cell towers, to reach customers in suburban and rural areas. European countries, in contract, are much more compact and urban-focused, making infrastructure less costly.

But that has proven to be nonsense for Sweden’s Tele2, which not only operates a nationwide 4G cellular network in Sweden — a country with its own vast rural regions — but promises to deliver service to 99% of the country by the end of the year and already covers more than 100 Swedish municipalities. They deliver service at a fraction of the cost charged by Verizon. Tele2 remains undeterred by the “rural cost argument,” taking on the world’s largest country — the Russian Federation. It has already acquired 12 regional mobile operators in Russia, expanding service to more than 43 regions with over 22 million customers, and plans additional investments.

The real reason for the inflated price of service, unsurprisingly, is America’s lack of robust wireless competition, according to GSMA.

Europe has the largest number of competing providers — 38 of 88 operators with LTE technology are in Europe. Even the smallest countries have at least three major competitors. The U.S. has two major competitors, two smaller national carriers, and a dozen or more regional or prepaid operators totally dependent on the larger four to deliver national roaming service.

Until recently, Verizon Wireless had a veritable monopoly on LTE service as AT&T tries to catch up — one of the very rare moments Verizon directly challenged AT&T in advertising that distinguished the coverage differences between the two. These days, AT&T and Verizon mimic one another, often offering identically priced service plans. Customers who want to pay less have to reduce their expectations with smaller competitors that offer reduced coverage.

If you don’t want access to premium wireless broadband, American carriers will also gouge you for lesser 3G service.

U.S. consumers on two year contract plans spend an average of $115 a month for 3G service, according to a survey conducted by Ernst & Young. In the Netherlands, the average was $51; in Britain, $59 — about half the price.

The growing mobile phone bill has now reached the point where Ernst & Young’s Jonathan Dharmapalan suggests it is literally interfering with smartphone adoption and causing others to shut off the devices permanently after an experience with bill shock.

“The No. 1 reason for customers’ discontinuing their use of a smartphone service or not taking the option is the fear of overspending,” Dharmapalan said.

A former FCC senior Internet technology adviser attempted to explain away the vast discrepancies in pricing, offering this bit of analysis: Europeans talk and surf  less.

Frontier Communications has found a new way to make a little extra from customers who disconnect their Internet service.

According to a document obtained exclusively by Stop the Cap!, Frontier will charge a $9.99 “Broadband Processing Fee” for new customers shutting off their Internet service starting Nov. 1. Customers that order Internet service from Frontier after Oct. 1 are supposed to be notified about the new fee during a review of their order. Existing customers are not affected.

This fee is above and beyond any early termination fees contract customers may face for ending service before the end of a service contract.

According to Frontier, broadband services subject to the new fee include:

• DSL
• “Simply Broadband” (broadband-only service)
• FiOS Data
• Frontier Satellite Broadband
• Frontier Tandem (VoIP)
• Wi-Fi (Commercial accounts only — basic, sponsored hot spots, etc.)