I really need to get us stepped up on representing the interests of other Time Warner targeted cities, and am looking for guest bloggers who could pen and/or help us gather and get out information. If you are already running a blog focused on this issue, we can help syndicate and distribute summaries of that content. If you are interested and live in any of these areas, please use the contact form and volunteer!

Just a few minor housekeeping matters and notes:

• When we moved the server, a side-effect was the introduction of some funky characters in some of our earlier articles.  This had to do with our old SQL server defaulting into a different character set.  Either I will manually re-edit these articles to get rid of that, or we’ll write a quick program and do it for us automatically.  Sorry about that.
• Our e-mail service attached to stopthecap.com is temporarily not working.  Mail is still being queued, so as soon as the problem is fixed tonight, everything will catch up.  If you sent a priority message and I have not responded, this is the reason.
• I will be tinkering with the look and feel of the site over the weekend.  One of my tendencies is to write long and typically involved articles on these issues.  For those looking to catch up on earlier material, scrolling through my word salads can be a ponderous endeavor.  A slight format change will make scrolling easier.

Upcoming priority articles will be directed to our friends in Texas on Time Warner price protection plans, plus an updated contact list you can use to bother Time Warner with your complaints.  I will also be posting more video news reports so people can follow how this story is being covered.

Good afternoon. A number of you have been sending me ideas regarding petitions, complaint forms, and other public policy initiatives. I appreciate receiving this information, and the reason you have not seen much push in this direction as of yet is because I wanted to first make sure people who needed alternatives to a capped Road Runner could begin to find them, especially those with Price Protection plans which let you lock in cap-free Internet for as long as you can. A lot of folks have been very emotional with me in discussing this issue. One young lady wrote she was in tears and hysterical because her parents just cut off her Internet because they were sure the cap started immediately. Another wrote he was having trouble staying focused and felt completely deflated thinking about the many ways these caps will change his life.

For a lot of younger people, the online life they have always known is about to change forever if we are stuck in an all-cap world. It’s a major shell shocker, and you cannot get people refocused on the fight against this until you deal with the emotional shock some people are coping with. So step one was finding people some hope that while we prepare to go to war over this issue, their Internet connection will at least be safe, available, and not predisposed to empty your wallet.

Next week, the education will begin. A lot of consumers do not understand the broadband business, and are at risk of being co-opted into an industry “us vs. them” campaign, where we are left arguing over their terms about who is a “bandwidth hog” and who “deserves a lower bill.” The first thing you need to know is there is no such thing as a lower bill. No Time Warner plan is going to save you money on these terms. If you are a light user who barely uses the net, there are already plenty of alternatives out there that cost less than what TW charges today, and will charge and limit you with tomorrow. Anyone with cable already knows the only direction those bills will go is up. It’s just we’ve redefined the stratosphere.

So we’re going to understand that we’re all in this together, whether you are a casual or very heavy user. This isn’t about costs or fake “bandwidth shortages,” this is about padding profits plain and simple, and attempting to kill off potential competition before it gets started.

And that latter point will be the direction we are going to go legislatively. Not only dealing with the net neutrality issue, but also the concepts of a level playing field, redlining people into bandwidth have’s and have not’s, and also equity of access for our rural communities. These are all points legislators care about, and since cable broadband service is completely unregulated, simply complaining about something legislators have no authority over at the moment will not help us. We’ll be dealing with state and local officials, federal agencies, and also private entities that stand to lose much more than we have. It’s time for Netflix and other like companies to start ponying up resources and get in the game, or their days are numbered.

Stay tuned. You can read a moderately improved article above the fold in today’s Democrat & Chronicle. It’s better than the last one, but there is still simply a ton of information missing. Ask us.

Good morning.

It appears we’ve managed a successful move to a much more robust and responsive server, hopefully putting an end to the crushing slowdowns we were dealing with yesterday afternoon as traffic overwhelmed us.   If you encounter any errors or problems, please let me know.

I spent part of last evening listening to some of the sources I developed back during the Frontier 5GB proposed cap debacle from last summer, and have been able to gain some interesting insights, at least for the Rochester market.

1) Time Warner employees locally aren’t exactly thrilled, saddled with Rochester being a “test city” for the Internet rationing plan for Road Runner.  I suspect there is a growing consensus that Rochester will become the early epicenter for the pushback against these caps as the story has hit a major nerve in this community and continues to drive news coverage and activism.  Some of the local employees know perfectly well this is a very vocal community when it comes to technological development, and the headaches have just begun for them.

This decision to impose caps comes from outside of this area, and the one thing I think we all agreed on is that this is not Beaumont, Texas.  The phone calls and e-mails to Time Warner are coming in fast and furious, and need to continue to come in.  The cancellations have already begun as people decide that after the last substantial rate hike for cable services, just a month or two ago, this was the final straw.  What really matters most to Time Warner will be the number of people who actually leave.  Everyone complains.  So “complain and bear it” is really not going to be too effective in the long run.  They are ready for that.

2) It appears the actual effective date for the rationing plan with the punitive overage charges will go into effect in Rochester on November 1st.  I don’t know if this is also the date for Austin and San Antonio.  Greensboro was supposed to start earlier than the other “lucky cities.”

3) Frontier is actually sitting back and reflecting on what Time Warner has done which is a very good sign.  Time Warner was convinced that Frontier would announce its own cap and provide cover for Time Warner in Rochester.  But there are some in management who are echoing my own beliefs that this is a golden opportunity to consider dropping the cap plan they pondered last summer and pull the rug out from under Time Warner by dropping any notion of a cap and going on the attack.  Imagine the advertising mailers and ads bashing Time Warner for rationing Internet for their customers and forcing them to watch a gas gauge while on Frontier, you can sit back and just enjoy your Internet service without being afraid of budget busting cable bills.  Keeping people with Frontier, especially on a bundle, also can help preserve their wired telephone business, which has been hurting as people flip to digital phone products or just use their cell phones.

I also reflected I felt like Julie, your cruise director, about the irony of this site directing customers away from Frontier last summer over the prospects of a 5GB usage cap, but now directing people back to a renewed Frontier that boldly makes smart choices to win back customers they’ve lost over the years.  Let’s hope those forward thinking Frontier executives are able to convince this company they can have an amazing spike in new business by using this opportunity to their advantage.  I will post an Open Letter to Frontier here soon enough.

In other developments this morning, the Democrat & Chronicle is looking for people willing to speak on this issue on camera for a major story this Sunday.  If you are interested and are in Rochester, call Jeff Blackwell at (585) 258-2712.

Patrice Walsh at WHAM-TV made an error in her news report last evening by stating Verizon FIOS has had usage caps for the last 18 months.  Oops!  Whoever told her that got it completely wrong.  Verizon FIOS has no usage caps with their service.  And there has been a lot of speculation in our own comments section about what Earthlink is going to do.  The tech support and front line customer service people are not aware of corporate policy, so they are simply reflecting back what they’ve been trained to say.  We are still waiting for corporate communications representatives to get back to us with a definitive answer.  Right now, no caps on Earthlink.

Thanks for the tremendous support from folks not just here in Rochester, but also in the other cities dealing with this. I am overwhelmed with the excellent ideas, suggestions, and responses and am going to begin bringing them together so we can begin work on several different fronts. I will be personally getting back to many of you asking if you can help head up some of these efforts. This absolutely will need to be a group endeavor, and I’d also like to have others writing articles here and helping to keep each other up to date.

I have a major article to write next about alternatives people in Rochester at least can find, but I’m hunting around for options in other affected cities as well. We’ll begin a mass exodus from Road Runner well before there are any usage caps, if only to let them know as customers we feel abused, taken for granted, and outraged over this naked attempt to profiteer. And we’ll be coordinating a public list of those specifically leaving for this reason.

Then, we’re going to get involved in two additional fronts:

– Public policy initiatives to start looking at legislative or regulatory approaches to market abuse;
– Sending gifts and flowers to Verizon corporate begging them to either invade Rochester or write a check from petty cash and buy out Frontier if they are incapable of competing on a level comparable to what Verizon is providing across the rest of the state.

And we’ll be partnering with other websites that are also working on this issue, particularly in places like Austin where the outrage over this action is growing with the same intensity it is here in upstate New York. Stay tuned!