Charter Communications, doing business as Time Warner Cable, has quickly moved to settle a lawsuit filed last week by the district attorneys of Los Angeles, San Diego, and Riverside, Calif.

The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court, alleged that Time Warner Cable misrepresented the internet speeds it marketed to California consumers and failed to deliver the level of service advertised.

“We cooperated fully in the review, have resolved this matter comprehensively, and this is expressly not a finding nor an admission of liability,” Charter said in a statement.

The lawsuit is very similar to one filed in New York in 2017 and later settled by Charter involving Time Warner Cable Maxx service, which offered internet speeds in upgraded service areas around New York City up to 300 Mbps.

The suit claimed that Time Warner Cable knowingly oversold its services using infrastructure incapable of meeting the level of service customers paid for. The California suit claimed Time Warner Cable allegedly engaged in unlawful business practices starting as early as 2013. Time Warner Cable was sold to Charter Communications in 2016 and began operating as Spectrum by the end of that year.

The district attorneys requested civil damages and a formal injunction prohibiting Spectrum from advertising internet speeds it cannot support. None of the district attorneys involved in the case had any comment about the settlement. It is not known what damages, if any, Charter has agreed to pay in return for settling the case out of court.

Residents in upstate New York are finding Spectrum bills in their mailbox for services they didn’t order and don’t want, after telling Spectrum telemarketers they were too busy to talk.

Three residents in Tupper Lake have been in touch with the village mayor, complaining they were enrolled in a $30-per-month Spectrum streaming TV service without their knowledge or consent.

Mayor Paul Maroun says recent robocalls from the cable operator were responsible for the surprise bills.

“It was a robocall that said, ‘Are you busy at the moment?'” Maroun said. “Once you said ‘yes,’ they record the ‘yes’ and they bill it.”

Maroun said he believes one or more Spectrum telemarketers are ordering new services for consumers using recorded customer responses to a different question as consent to start service. Within a month, bills start arriving in the mailboxes of consumers. Even worse, some consumers do not immediately realize they are being billed for new services they did not authorize because they chose electronic billing and autopay, which automatically pays the bill without customer intervention each month.

The problem was serious enough to be a topic of discussion by the village board, reports the Adirondack Daily Enterprise:

One alleged victim of the call is retired village electric department superintendent Marc Staves, who returned to the village board for a meeting on Wednesday as a civilian to tell the board about his experience and to warn others.

Staves said he caught the additional charge on the first month it landed on his bill. He said he is not sure how it happened because he does not remember taking a call. Staves said Spectrum told him a robocall was placed, but he said his phone records show he never answered it.

“That’s kind of underhanded,” Staves said when he learned how the call works at the village board meeting.

He has automatic payments set up on his account, but still checks the amount.

“It’s always good to keep track of your automatic deductions,” Staves said.

He was told the company would refund his money, but said after a week it still hadn’t. When he called again he said he was told the $30 charge would be taken off his next month’s bill.

“I was okay at that point until I hung up the phone and thought about it,” Staves said. “It’s really no different than me going into your wallet, taking $30 out of your wallet and telling you I’m going to work it off next month.”

He said he is “not satisfied” with the resolution Spectrum offered him, saying it is being done in a “roundabout way.”

Maroun told Staves he has received two other calls from villagers about the same problem, both for $30-per-month charges. He said those people have gotten their money back.

Mayor Maroun

Spectrum spokesperson Lara Pritchard said this was the first time she heard of this complaint and suggested third party scammers might be “spoofing” customers.

“If an offer doesn’t sound right, customers can ask the representative on the phone to validate they are an employee by looking up their account number,” Pritchard wrote in an email. “Spectrum representatives will always have an account number. Then call Spectrum (at their customer service number on your bill) and ask if there is any such person working there.”

But since consumers are being billed for the unauthorized service(s) on their Spectrum bill, the telemarketers must have a business relationship with the cable operator. It could be a third party marketing company hired by Spectrum to sell service. A bonus or commission is likely payable for each successful sale, which could be an incentive for a dishonest employee to game the system.

Stop the Cap! recommends not answering Spectrum’s telemarketing calls or just hang up immediately. Be sure to verify your bill through the My Spectrum app or website and report any unauthorized charges immediately. Consumers can also file complaints with your state Attorney General’s office. Fabien Levy, a spokesman for New York’s Attorney General told the newspaper while the office has received a number of complaints about Spectrum, none were related to this issue. That could change if consumers report these kinds of scams.

Residents of southern Vermont are upset about Comcast’s proposed acquisition of an independent cable company that has served the region for more than 30 years, fearing the cable giant will bring its reputation of high rates, poor service, and abusive customer relations to an area known for resisting large corporations.

The Southern Vermont Cable Company (SVCC) owns several small cable systems serving about 2,450 subscribers around Brattleboro, just a short distance from the Massachusetts and New York borders. SVCC launched service because larger cable companies including Comcast and what was formerly Time Warner Cable did not see a viable business opportunity serving southern Vermont. The independent operator successfully launched service on its own, but has faced business pressure from cord-cutting and a constant need to upgrade its cable plant to meet growing demands for fast and robust broadband service.

“For more than 30 years, SVCC has offered great local service to its customers and has made significant capital investments in its system throughout the years,” Daniel M. Glanville, vice president of government/regulatory affairs and community impact for Comcast’s western New England region, said in testimony before state regulators reviewing the sale. “However, there is a need for continued capital investment as technology continues to evolve and video competition continues to increase due to an ever-growing number of video service options.”

Instead of offering to sell the system to the communities it serves, SVCC executives elected to sell the system to Comcast.

“I am confident that an organization like Comcast will provide SVCC’s subscribers with quality customer service and will continue to invest in SVCC’s systems,” said Ernest Scialabba, president and owner of SVCC.

Customers have a much different view, according to the Brattleboro Refomer:

Steve West of Dummerston told regulators he has “only praise for the good folks at SVCable, and nothing but contempt for Comcast.”

“As a computer repair professional for 20 years, I’ve had many dealings with Comcast/Xfinity, nearly all of it bad,” he wrote. “Many of us in rural Vermont have few options. I view them as one of the most toxic companies in the U.S., and I’ve successfully avoided being a customer.”

Martha Ramsey of Brattleboro told the commission she is a Comcast customer and “can attest, along with all my neighbors, that Comcast has a long way to go to providing reliable cable service” to southern Vermont.

“Therefore, I can only assume that this sale would simply be a hostile buyout for the benefit not of customers but of shareholders, and so should not be permitted, in order to prevent any further erosion of decent utility services in Vermont,” she wrote. “My Comcast bill has already increased by an outrageous percentage in the last five years without any credible explanation, and I expect such increases to continue. Helping Comcast to become the only player in the market would be to accelerate this race to the bottom — that is, increasingly unaffordable and increasingly shoddy infrastructure and service — that at a scary pace is impoverishing all but the very wealthy.”

“Comcast will provide increased reliability and network capacity which will enable former SVCC customers to enjoy the full suite of Comcast’s Xfinity TV services, including the X1 platform, Xfinity on Demand (Comcast’s video on demand service), multiple high-definition offerings, sports programming and international programming,” said a Comcast representative. “Comcast will also introduce Comcast Business Services, which provides business-grade products and services for businesses of all sizes. Video customers will also be able to use the Xfinity Stream app on their tablet or smartphone to view live and Xfinity On Demand programming.”

But the idea a giant multinational company like Comcast, with more than 830,000 customers, will preserve a local touch to SVCC’s operations is absurd, according to local residents.

“Please don’t allow this to happen,” Kathleen Fleischmann wrote. “One of the reasons we chose to move to Vermont was that it wasn’t owned by the multinationals. Southern Vermont Cable is a great company, and our service would certainly be degraded by having to deal with Comcast. You must be aware that they are one of the most hated corporations in the country. Their lack of customer service is legendary.”

Eli K. Coughlin-Galbraith urged the commission not to “let this one go. We’re all being strangled by massive multinational corporations piece by piece. Fight it. Fight it any way you can.”

The Vermont Department of Public Service will hold a public hearing about the proposed sale from 4-8 p.m. on Feb. 3 at the O’Brien Auditorium in the East Academic Building at Landmark College in Putney.

Lobbyists for Mediacom, one of America’s medium-sized cable operators, are reportedly behind the latest effort to curtail public broadband in the state of Iowa with a new bill designed to make life difficult for municipalities trying to get internet access to their residents.

Senate Study Bill 3009, proposed by Sen. Dan Dawson, the new chairman of the Iowa Senate Commerce Committee, would create an unfair playing field between cities and towns attempting to offer their residents broadband service and the state’s private cable and phone companies which often do not.

In addition to tying the hands of local officials in their efforts to obtain funding for such projects, the bill would also make a public record of private strategies used by providers to construct systems and market service to the public. Cable operators like Mediacom could be able to obtain business records from municipal providers that would give the company an unfair advantage identifying financial information and rollout schedules about where municipal systems would offer service next.

Iowa’s report for Mediacom’s lobbying activity shows their support for restricting public broadband.

The bill would also forbid communities from marketing their broadband service on bills sent for other municipal services, including power, gas, sewage, garbage removal, and water. Municipalities would also be forbidden from lowering rates to levels deemed unprofitable, even when incumbent providers like Mediacom cut prices in competitive service areas to keep business while quietly subsidizing those lower prices on the backs of their other subscribers in non-competitive areas.

Iowans can protest the new bill by sending e-mail to Sens. Dan Dawson ([email protected]) and Carrie Koelker, ([email protected]) the subcommittee chairperson reviewing the bill. Ask them to kill the bill, because Iowa needs more broadband service, not less.

No service.

Despite New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $500 million, 2015 Broadband for All initiative which guaranteed broadband service for anyone  that wanted home internet access, five years later rural broadband gaps continue to plague the state.

A bill that would set aside funds to complete a feasibility study to launch a state owned broadband provider of last resort was quietly vetoed by Cuomo at the end of 2019. Assembly member Aileen Gunther (D-Monticello) sponsored the bill after hearing scores of complaints about terrible or non-existent internet access from constituents in her district, which covers the parts of the rural Catskills region north of the Pennsylvania border.

Gunther complained that despite the governor’s broadband initiative, private phone and cable companies were still ignoring rural customers, leaving them with slow DSL service or no internet access at all. Gunther’s bill was a first step in potentially allowing the state to step in and provide service to New Yorkers unable to get broadband from any private provider.

New York has spent over $500 million on its Broadband for All program and made Charter Spectrum an integral part of its broadband expansion plans in return for approval of its 2016 acquisition of Time Warner Cable. But a growing number of the governor’s critics claim the program has failed to deliver on its mandate, stranding thousands of New Yorkers without internet service and tens of thousands more with just one option — unpopular satellite internet access.

Gunther

Gunther was upset to learn that New York was prepared to hand over more than a half billion dollars to large private telecom companies including Frontier Communications and Verizon while not being willing to spend a penny to fund projects to reach New Yorkers for-profit companies could not be dragged kicking and screaming to service.

“We’re all spending millions and millions of dollars on privately owned internet service providers,” said Gunther. “In return for promises, a lot of our communities do not have access to the internet, or if they do have access to the internet, it’s slow and these companies are not, I think, fulfilling the promises made.”

The rural broadband problem is not resolved in the Finger Lakes or Southern Tier regions of New York either. This week, Yates County announced it was joining an effort by Schuyler, Steuben, and Tioga counties, and the Southern Tier Network, to complete a broadband feasibility study to improve internet access in the four counties. Fujitsu Broadband will manage the study and hopes to have results by June. The study will target the pervasive problem of inadequate broadband service in the region, which includes crucial tourist, winery, and agricultural businesses vital to New York’s rural economy.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announcing rural broadband initiatives in New York in 2015.

Gov. Cuomo has called such initiatives “well-intentioned” but was non committal about contributing more state funds to construct new networks or underwrite further expansion of existing ones. New York is about to begin its annual hard-fought budget negotiations in hopes of completing the state budget by April. Finding funding for such projects will probably require a powerful political advocate able to wrestle funding for further broadband improvements.

Even after spending $500 million, New York’s rural broadband problem has not been resolved. That offers insight into the merits of other state broadband programs, which often limit annual broadband expansion funding to under $30 million annually.

Those still without service are likely in high-cost service areas, where each customer could cost over $20,000 to reach. New York’s Broadband for All program relied on a reverse auction that required private companies to bid to service each unserved address. No wireline provider bid on any high-cost service areas, leaving Hughes Satellite as a subsidized satellite provider of last resort. But inadequate broadband mapping left scores of rural New Yorkers behind without even the option of subsidized satellite internet access.