Mayor Guest

Despite protests from major technology companies, consumers, and local communities across Georgia, the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee passed a slightly-revised HB 282, a bill that would largely ban communities from building their own networks to deliver 21st century broadband service. The bill has been moved out of the Rules Committee and will be debated on the House floor Thursday. Readers can find and contact their state representative (preferably leaving a phone message opposing HB 282) through this website. Do it this afternoon!

Last Thursday, community leaders appeared in Atlanta to oppose the corporate welfare protectionism that HB 282 represents.

“Let’s talk about economic development,” said Elberton Mayor Larry Guest. “Georgia should be promoting a pro-business, inclusive approach to broadband deployment, especially in rural areas of the state,” he said. “Competition ensures market-based pricing and faster delivery of state-of-the-art services. We have to do everything we can to attract jobs. If we don’t do that, business will not select rural Georgia. High speed access is essential to us.”

Mark Creekmore depends on his Internet connection in his Dawsonville home as part of his job and Windstream has let him down for at least three years. He pays for 12Mbps service and regularly receives around 600kbps service after 3pm because Windstream has hopelessly oversold its DSL service.

“No one should have to pay for Internet speeds they are not receiving and be told that because they live in a rural area, getting them fixed is just not a priority,” Creekmore complains. “That’s like saying: ‘Because you live in the sticks, you do not deserve what the city folks deserve despite the fact that you pay the same money for service that they do.'”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WGCL Atlanta New Bill Hinders Broadband 2-26-13.mp4[/flv]

WGCL, the CBS station in Atlanta, is asking tough questions about HB 282 and exactly who it will benefit. Some suspect the bill will protect Windstream from having to upgrade its broadband services, something essential to Dawsonville resident Mark Creekmore, who has to turn customers away because Windstream’s DSL service is so poor in his area.  (3 minutes)

Creekmore is incensed Windstream is behind a push to pass HB 282, which bill supporters claim will “stimulate investment in rural broadband,” at the same time the phone company leaves him and others with substandard speeds and service.

“I do not think it is ethical for companies like Windstream, already benefiting from taxpayer dollars, to back a bill that will keep municipalities from offering their residents something better,” said Creekmore.

Creekmore opposes government waste, but is not opposed to local communities stepping up when telecommunications companies have let their customers down.

Despite claims HB 282 will promote rural broadband expansion, Windstream’s CEO Jeff Gardner told investors the opposite Feb. 19 in a conference call.

“We will finish most of our broadband stimulus initiatives which expands our addressability to roughly 75,000 new households,” said Gardner. “As we exit 2013, we will see capital spending related to these projects decrease substantially.”

Windstream’s broadband problems are not limited to rural Georgia. In rural Missouri, Windstream’s DSL service has performed so poorly in certain communities local businesses have had to shut down operations for the day when kids are out on “snow days” because service deteriorates to the point it becomes unusable.

Thomasville, Ga., runs a public fiber to the home network that delivers the speeds it advertises.

“Windstream has made it clear that they have no plans to invest in areas where they don’t feel they can be profitable,” said Piedmont Area Chamber of Commerce president Scott Combs.

Because rural broadband problems remain so pervasive, a group of technology companies including Google and Alcatel-Lucent sent a letter to the chairman of the Georgia House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee protesting the bill:

The private sector alone cannot enable the United States to take full advantage of the opportunities that advanced communications networks can create in virtually every area of life. As a result, federal and state efforts are taking place across the Nation, including Georgia, to deploy both private and public broadband infrastructure to stimulate and support economic development and job creation, especially in economically distressed areas. HB 282 would prevent public broadband providers from building the sorely needed advanced broadband infrastructure that will stimulate local businesses development, foster work force retraining, and boost employment in economically underachieving areas.

Thus far, the only response has been to slightly ease the language in the bill, now defining suitable broadband at 3Mbps service, up from 1.5Mbps. Communities with municipally owned utilities would also be exempt from the prohibition on selling telecom services. But that is hardly enough.

“Three megabits is not adequate to do functions in a modern telecommunications world,” said Thomasville mayor Max Beverly.

Thomasville has its own public broadband network and the difference between it and providers like Windstream are quickly apparent.

While Windstream sells rural Georgians service at 12Mbps but actually delivers less than 1Mbps, Thomasville residents are excited about forthcoming upgrades to 20Mbps service that actually means 20Mbps service. Thomasville’s fiber network has proved so financially successful, the community eliminated its local property tax. If HB 282 passes, other communities will find constructing such networks nearly impossible.

Democracy Now! featured Chris Mitchell and Catharine Rice on March 4, who talked about how large telecom companies are lobbying to ban community-owned broadband networks, including those in Georgia. AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and others are having success in the southeastern United States with the help of Republican state lawmakers and conservative groups with ties to the Koch Brothers. (10 minutes)

Alex Dudley, a specialist in corporate crisis communications, has left Time Warner Cable after serving as the cable company’s group vice president of public relations, to take an executive position at Charter Communications.

Our readers will recall Dudley represented Time Warner during its 2009 experiment with usage caps and consumption billing. He tweeted company talking points from his @TWCAlex account. In the summer of 2010, more than a year after the experiment was shelved after customer protests, Dudley was still defending the need for broadband usage limits:

“As Internet use increases, TWC techs, engineers, and executives need to make adjustments such as DOCSIS upgrades at the cable company headend or “node splits” that divide a shared cable loop in two when bandwidth use hits certain metrics. Paying all of these people costs money, and those costs increase as the network is more heavily used.”

Unfortunately for him, Time Warner Cable’s own financial reports belied his claims. The DOCSIS 3 upgrade, now complete at Time Warner Cable, had no material impact on the company’s pre-planned capital expenses, and was undertaken at the same time the cable operator began increasing prices on broadband service.

Dudley will assume the role of senior vice president of communications at Charter on March 18. His high-profile status at Charter was reflected by a statement from Charter CEO Tom Rutledge welcoming him to the company:

“These appointments reflect a commitment to our customers, shareholders and employees to support and sustain the positive changes taking place at Charter,” Rutledge said. “Alex is a proven leader who brings with him a wealth of expertise in developing and managing compelling messaging and executing high-impact, strategic communications. He will be a valuable contributor to our organization.”

Cablevision’s yesteryear marketing: As outdated as this Harvest Gold Trimline phone.

Cablevision’s bizarre new ads for its Optimum triple-play package (the one that puts broadband, arguably its most important component, dead last) have reached a new low in the latest series featuring… Michael Bolton?

Bolton is a practical unknown to the most important demographic group not buying cable: recent graduate twenty-somethings that were 12 when one of his songs last plagued top-40 radio. Cablevision’s misfire could only be outdone if Nike hired Dick Van Dyke to pitch their shoes.

This is the best Cablevision can manage after Sandy blew away 11,000 of their customers (potentially for good) and rate increases took another 28,000 households with them (mostly to the benefit of Verizon FiOS)? Was the runner-up Joyce DeWitt from Three’s Company pitching a three-pack of phone, television, and (oh yes) Internet service?

Cablevision’s marketing efforts are now partly overseen by the CEO’s wife, who ‘somehow’ landed the prominent role of rebranding Cablevision/Optimum. Perhaps her best talents lie elsewhere.

Verizon featured Michael Bay blowing things up in FiOS ads five years ago that were more trendy than Cablevision was this week.

The point of the ad? Michael Bolton keeps getting annoyed with masses of would-be Cablevision customers calling in to sign up for cable service on a toll-free number that is just one digit away from Michael Bolton’s toll-free number (?) Yes, that is Bolton talking on a (shudder) landline (at least he has a cordless phone). Does anyone under 30 even know what a “toll-free” call is?

For those of us who remember what a dial tone sounds like and can still recognize a Trimline rotary phone, the ad still does not make sense. I am perplexed why Michael Bolton has a toll-free number. I guess when Tonya Harding’s name recognition rivals Michael Bolton’s, the fact he has a toll-free number gives him the edge.

A minute later, I am left wondering why I care. I am not certainly not wondering why I haven’t picked up the phone to order Cablevision service.

When it comes to branding and image, here is what Cablevision just accomplished:

• Verizon FiOS circa 2008 = Michael Bay blowing cool stuff up.
• Cablevision this week = Michael Bolton.

‘Nuff said.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Cablevision Ads Michael Bolton.flv[/flv]

AD FAIL: What were they thinking? Michael Bolton annoys viewers trying to recollect his career while Cablevision tries to make New York, New Jersey and Connecticut remember why they should care.  (1 minute)

Do you ever wonder why your local cable system suddenly decided to begin carrying barely known networks like Centric, Logo, Palladia, and a dozen other channels you can’t recall ever watching even as providers perennially complain about “increased programming costs?”

The cable dial has gotten increasingly crowded with secondary cable networks that usually occupy three digit channel numbers somewhere in cable dial Siberia, unlikely to be encountered by anyone other than the most hearty channel surfer.

Welcome to the cable network racket, run by the corporate owners of popular cable networks that allegedly force cable operators to also carry (and pay for) lesser-watched networks as part of a broader carriage deal.

Today, Cablevision filed an antitrust lawsuit against Viacom in Manhattan federal court for illegally forcing the cable company to carry and pay for more than a dozen ancillary cable networks it claims customers don’t want, just so Viacom will sell access to popular cable networks including Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon.

“The manner in which Viacom sells its programming is illegal, anti-consumer, and wrong,” Cablevision indicated in a prepared statement. “Viacom’s abuse of its market power is not only illegal, but also prevents Cablevision from delivering the programming that its customers want and that competes with Viacom’s less popular channels.”

Cablevision argues Viacom is hostile with cable operators who don’t want these add-on channels, coercing carriage agreements by threatening “massive financial penalties” or exclusion of popular channels altogether until operators sign up for the majority of Viacom networks.

Cablevision’s complaint asserts that Viacom is engaged in a “per se” illegal tying arrangement in violation of federal antitrust laws. Cablevision also claims Viacom has engaged in unlawful “block booking,” a form of tying  conditions on the sale of a package of rights to the purchaser’s taking of other rights.

Cablevision is seeking a number of remedies including voiding the carriage agreement Cablevision signed with Viacom just last December, a permanent injunction banning Viacom from making carriage agreements conditional on adding other networks, and financial relief in the form of damages and legal costs related to bringing the suit.

Yes

Viacom-owned networks customers actually want:

• MTV
• MTV2
• Nickelodeon
• VH1
• Spike
• TV Land
• Comedy Central
• BET

What?

Viacom’s 14 extra networks you may have never heard of and may not want to pay for:

• Centric
• CMT
• MTV Hits
• MTV Tr3s
• Nick Jr.
• Nicktoons
• Palladia
• Teen Nick
• VH1 Classic
• VH1 Soul
• Logo
• CMT Pure Country
• Nick 2
• MTV Jams

Viacom issued a statement minutes ago claiming it would “vigorously defend this transparent attempt by Cablevision to use the courts to renegotiate our existing two-month-old agreement.”

Viacom argues it does not force operators to carry any of its networks, but admitted it does offer financial incentives in the form of lower prices when operators agree to also carry its lesser-known networks. Viacom said that it had “long offered discounts to those who agree to provide additional network distribution.”