Thanks to one of our readers who also happens to be a TWC employee, here is the latest update to Charter/Spectrum’s list of first year promotions, taking effect in California and Texas (9/20) this month.

We expect it will be rolling out to other TWC and BH regions over the next few months. Unless you are compelled to change packages, if you are on a current Time Warner Cable or Bright House promotion or retention deal, we recommend you keep it until it expires. You can then enroll in one of these promotions, almost certainly at these prices, extending the length of your savings.

We expect Charter’s retention department to deliver a tougher line on retention packages and promotions than Time Warner Cable gave customers. Once these promotional prices expire, your rates will step up each year for two years thereafter until you reach the “rack rate” — Charter’s regular pricing. Your ability to secure new customer pricing again will probably require you to bounce between providers or cancel/come back as a new customer. I am told by long-time Charter customers that Charter’s retention prices are usually not as good as new customer pricing.

We have some corrections to our earlier coverage on this last month: broadband-only customers will pay a promotional rate of $39.99 a month for the first year for 60Mbps service, $79.99 a month for 100Mbps service (100Mbps or 300Mbps in existing TWC Maxx territories), not the $60/99 rack rate. We have received word Earthlink will continue to be another option for customers to consider for broadband service, which can be a good way to secure extended promotional pricing. Another change: phone service is now an extra $10 a month, not $20, as part of a triple play package. We notice Charter only lists free calling to U.S. numbers on this sheet. Time Warner Cable includes free calls to Canada, Mexico, China, Hong Kong, India, The EU, Norway and U.S. territories. We are unsure if this represents an omission or a downgrade. Also, the Wi-Fi fee is waived for Spectrum Ultra, which corrects our earlier piece where we thought this fee would apply to both broadband packages. Multi-DVR service pricing is still confusing on this chart. We’ve heard Charter intends to ditch TWC’s Whole House DVR service and give subscribers the option of multiple standalone DVR units instead. DVR pricing is: $4.99 for each DVR box + an $11.99 DVR service fee (if you have only one DVR). If you want multiple DVRs, they are each $4.99 a month with an all-inclusive monthly service fee of $19.99, regardless of how many extra DVR boxes you rent.

Obviously, we will be looking for money-saving opportunities for our readers once we get a better handle on Charter’s way of doing business.

With more than one million people in its footprint across western New York, Frontier Communications has the potential of picking up a significant number of new customers and keeping others from leaving with the introduction of its Vantage IPTV service (see our coverage from this spring to learn more about Vantage TV), set to arrive in the Greater Rochester area by the end of this year.

Rochester is Frontier’s largest legacy copper service area by population, encompassing the majority of the 585 area code. Yet for all that history and Rochester’s significant population base, over the last 15 years Frontier has owned the former Rochester Telephone, upgrades to its copper wire infrastructure have been modest. Significant segments of Frontier’s service area in Rochester still cannot support greater than 3-6Mbps DSL because the company has proportionally underinvested in network upgrades.

That underinvestment has allowed Time Warner Cable (now Charter) to amass a large majority of the residential broadband, phone, and television market in the region. Winning those customers back may be tough without considerable investment in ridding the Rochester area of large segments of copper wiring in place since the 1960s and 1970s. Frontier will be competing against a company that offers broadband speeds starting at 60Mbps and will be discounting its plans, packages and equipment fees for the next few years.

Vantage TV is powered by Frontier’s broadband service and will need more bandwidth than the company can now supply across parts of the three dozen communities it plans to market IPTV in the Greater Rochester area. CEO Dan McCarthy promised to upgrade much of Frontier’s copper network to support speeds of 50Mbps or higher, but that isn’t likely to happen this year in large parts of western New York.

Historically, Frontier has preferred acquiring other companies’ already-built fiber and fiber/copper networks instead of spending the money to build comparable networks from scratch. That is why there is a wide disparity between Frontier’s performance in its acquired FiOS and U-verse territories (Indiana, Pacific Northwest, and Connecticut) and its legacy network (Rochester) and acquired dilapidated copper communities (non-FiOS Verizon acquisition areas, most of West Virginia, etc.)

The Vantage TV announcement underwhelmed local media, with only one television station bothering to cover it. That may be a result of skepticism among area reporters who have had direct past experience using Frontier’s DSL service and share our attitude about Frontier’s press releases: only believe it when you actually see it.

Always looking for a new angle.

While T-Mobile and Sprint are preparing to battle it out offering dueling unlimited data plans, Verizon Wireless and AT&T are continuing to raise prices for many customers while pushing upgrades on customers some do not need.

This week, AT&T officially introduced its Mobile Share Advantage plan, with most of the advantages going to AT&T.

Per device fees have shot up by as much as 33% if you have more than two smartphones on your account. AT&T used to charge $15 per smartphone as a device fee. Now it is $20, offset in many cases by some reductions in data plan costs. But once you add a third device, you are paying a $5 rate increase per device.

The company is also trying to clean up its reputation by eliminating the scourge of data-related overlimit fee bill shock. Before the change, AT&T customers faced an overlimit fee of $5 for each 300MB used on its 300MB data plan and $15 per gigabyte on other plans. Instead of billing overlimit fees, AT&T is adopting punishing speed throttles for customers over their allowance. Once customers exceed their plan limit, speeds are reduced to 2G levels, up to 128kbps. While that is just painful for web pages, it makes watching video and uploading photos next to impossible without experiencing frustrating network timeout error messages.

Gone are the 2, 5, and 15GB plans. Customers can now choose from 12 different usage plans ranging from 1-100GB.

But AT&T’s most conservative users of data are going to pay more under the new plan. Customers enrolled in the old 2GB $30 data plan, suitable for those who use their phones to check e-mail and view web pages, will find that same $30 will only buy them 1GB if they switch to the new plan. To avoid the likelihood of hitting the speed throttle, these customers will have to upgrade to a 3GB plan for $40 — a $10 increase.

For everyone else who happens to slightly exceed their data allowance, many may end up preferring the old $15 overlimit fee system. Under the new plan, customers have to live with speed throttles that make their devices almost unusable until the billing cycle refreshes. We predict many customers won’t wait and will upgrade their data plan to restore functionality. But upgrades from the 3GB and 6GB plans come in $20 increments — $5 more than the overlimit fee charged for slightly going over. Even worse, if the overage was a one-time issue, many customers will spend $20 more on a data allowance many probably won’t use.

Customers are free to keep their existing plan, for now. But if they change plans, they won’t be able to switch back.