Charter Communications today officially announced it will acquire control of Bright House Networks in a $10.4 billion deal the two companies are calling a “partnership.”

Widely anticipated, the deal will help Charter in its quest to become the second largest cable operator in the country, up from fourth place.

Bright House is the sixth largest cable operator, serving almost two million video customers in central Florida including Orlando and Tampa Bay, as well as Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, and California.

The deal will establish a partnership between Charter and Bright House’s current owner, Advance/Newhouse. But nobody will doubt who is in charge. Charter will own 73.7% of the venture, leaving the Newhouse family with a minority share of 26.3%. Bright House shareholders will receive shares of New Charter stock.

The deal is partly contingent on Time Warner Cable, which has a right to acquire Bright House for itself as part of a long-standing partnership between the two cable companies on programming and technology matters. But such an acquisition now seems remote, considering Time Warner Cable remains tied up in its year-long effort to be acquired by Comcast. An even larger Time Warner Cable would further complicate that transaction in Washington, where regulators are clearly concerned about supersizing Comcast. Since some regulators count Bright House customers as de facto Time Warner Cable customers, having Bright House acquired by Charter would seem to reduce Comcast’s influence over American broadband and cable television by cutting its combined market share from 29 to 27 million subscribers.

The Charter Sucks website could soon be getting more traffic.

But Charter is also dependent on the Comcast deal closing, because that transaction delivers Charter another 2.5 million Time Warner and Comcast castoffs that will be sold service under the brand GreatLand Connections. The combination of those subscribers and Bright House will make Charter the second largest cable operator in the country.

Unfortunately for customers, Charter isn’t even close to second place in customer satisfaction or service. Beyond the very active Charter Sucks website, every consumer satisfaction measurement firm places Charter substantially below average in service, satisfaction, and pricing. Bright House scored on the high side.

“From the frying pan into the fire,” lamented Sam Pama, a former Bright House customer turned FiOS fan in Tampa. “First Frontier bought Verizon FiOS in Florida and now Charter is buying Bright House. Both treat their customers like crap.”

One piece of good news: Charter quietly shelved their usage caps months ago and Frontier has only toyed with them in the past, taking significant heat from Stop the Cap! before backing off. Neither are expected to slap usage limits or usage billing on customers in the foreseeable future.

After Comcast customer Conal O’Rourke spent more than a year trying to get the cable company to stop overbilling him, Comcast allegedly got their revenge by having O’Rourke fired from his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which just so happened to count Comcast as an important client.

O’Rourke sued Comcast after the company allegedly complained about O’Rourke’s persistence to his boss at the accounting firm. After months of discovery motions surrounding the lawsuit, O’Rourke’s legal team has amended their complaint to add a seventh cause of action — invasion of privacy — after Comcast’s damage control efforts exposed private conversations between O’Rourke and Comcast customer service representatives.

The Consumerist was the first to tell O’Rourke’s story, and it has now learned Comcast allegedly recorded and used O’Rourke’s private conversations with the cable company to further disparage O’Rourke to protect its own image. His attorneys are now asking for additional damages, up from the original $1 million to more than $5 million:

After Conal filed suit, Comcast released a statement to Consumerist and others, explaining that, “As part of this investigation, we have listened to recorded calls between Mr. O’Rourke and our customer service representatives and his treatment of them and his language is totally unspeakable.”

This statement and description of the customer service calls goes too far, says Conal in the revised lawsuit.

“The recorded customer service telephone calls between Mr. O’Rourke and Comcast are private, and are not the subjects of legitimate public concern,” reads the amended complaint. “Comcast’s public disclosure of the existence and nature of Mr. O’Rourke’s private calls to Comcast customer service – which disclosure falsely portrays Mr. O’Rourke as an individual lacking in decency, ethics and integrity – is offensive and objectionable to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities.”

The lawsuit claims that “Comcast’s conduct towards Mr. O’Rourke was wanton, willful and intentional, and committed with malicious intent.”

Comcast apparently intends to drag the case out in court, potentially for years.

“That’s how long hard-fought federal lawsuits are taking in this district these days, and Comcast will be opposing it hard,” Conal’s lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon told Ars Technica. “I can’t say on the record why it didn’t settle, but you can see from Comcast’s public statements that they want to be ‘vindicated.’”

Walden

When a group advocating broad-based deregulation and less government suddenly takes a laser-focused, almost obsessive interest in a subject like Internet Net Neutrality, it rarely happens for free.

Randolph May’s Free State Foundation claims to be a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank to promote the free market, limited government, and rule of law principles. But in fact it primarily promotes the corporate interests of some of the group’s biggest financial backers, which include the wireless and cable industry.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), no stranger to big checks from cable companies himself, was in friendly territory at the group’s annual Telecom Policy Conference, a largely consumer-free affair, where he served as keynote speaker. Walden used the occasion to announce a solution to the Net Neutrality problem — defunding the FCC sufficiently to make sure it can never enforce the policy.

Walden, ignoring four million Americans who submitted comments almost entirely in favor of Net Neutrality, said the idea of the FCC overseeing an open and free Internet represented “regulatory overreach that will hurt consumers.”

Big Telecom Funded

Walden serves as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. Walden told the audience he will be spending his time in Congress taking a hard look at the FCC, its budget request, and its policies after Net Neutrality became official FCC policy. Walden’s plans to punish the agency include a limit on FCC appropriations, making enforcement of Net Neutrality more difficult, if not impossible. Longer term, he hopes to bleed the agency dry by depriving it of resources to manage its regulatory mandate.

Walden’s third largest contributor is Comcast. He also receives significant financial support from the American Cable Association and Cox Cable. He spoke to a group that depends heavily on contributions from the same telecom industry Walden’s campaign coffer does.

According to tax filings by two cable and wireless lobbying groups, the Free State Foundation has cashed almost a half a million dollars in checks written by the groups in the last five years. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) paid FSF $280,000. The wireless lobby, represented by CTIA-The Wireless Association, managed $213,000 in contributions. These two groups are likely among FSF’s most substantial donors.

In 2012, Free State Foundation reported a total of $797,500 in contributions. After Stop the Cap! and other groups began reporting on the connection between the Free State Foundation’s agenda and its Big Telecom sponsors, the group began hiding its donor list. That earned FSF an “F” for donor transparency by PCWorld.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Free State Foundation Seventh Annual Telecom Policy Conference March 2015.mp4[/flv]

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) delivered the keynote address at the 7th Annual Telecom Policy Conference of the Free State Foundation. Despite receiving nearly a half million dollars in contributions from the cable and wireless lobbies, the group did not think to invest in a tripod to keep the camera steady. (38:42)

Spanish telephone company Telefónica knows the days of traditional ADSL broadband are numbered, so the company is junking its copper wire network and upgrading customers to fiber broadband at no extra charge.

Telefónica president Luis Miguel Gilpérez said the upgrade is part of Spain’s march to be the most digital country in Europe. It also establishes a modern broadband platform on which Telefónica can sell its streaming video and pay TV services to the public. The company holds an 85 percent share in the fiber network.

Gilpérez likened the company’s current top-tier of 100Mbps as yesterday’s news.

“It appears that 100Mbps falls short and customers demand more speed, so the company is looking to develop these services [with] an increase in speed,” Gilpérez told El País.

Spain already has 10.3 million households connected to fiber. Telefónica hopes to reach an additional 3.6 million homes this year, but is threatening to cut its investment if it is forced to share its fiber network with competitors.

Telefónica is already required by Spanish regulators to open its copper network to competing ISPs at a regulated wholesale price. The Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC), the Spanish trade and competition regulator, is currently proposing to extend open access to Telefónica’s fiber network as well.

At present, the telephone company faces competition from Vodafone/Ono, Jazztel and Orange, which all offer up to 200Mbps speeds. Most expect competitors will boost speeds to match or exceed Telefónica’s new speed offer.

A Washington state man who just moved into his new home is now being forced to consider selling it to somebody else because Comcast repeatedly misled him about its ability to provide service.

Seth told his extensive story to The Consumerist, which detailed his repeated attempts to get Comcast broadband service after multiple missed or unfinished service appointments. More importantly, Seth is representative of many Americans who have been told broadband is a fiercely competitive industry, yet they cannot sign up for service at a reasonable price from any provider.

For Seth, having reliable broadband service is not just a convenience — it is essential if he wants to stay employed. Before even considering making an offer on his new home in Kitsap County, Seth did his homework verifying Comcast provided service in the neighborhood. Comcast repeatedly assured him it did, and one sales rep confirmed a former resident at the same address had Comcast service. Seth was satisfied, bought the home and called to get Comcast service installed. But when a Comcast crew arrived Jan. 31, they quickly discovered there was no cable line strung to Seth’s property. That isn’t typically a deal-breaker and the techs completed a “drop bury request” that would normally result in the arrival of a Comcast cable burial crew to bring service from a nearby utility pole. Not this time.

Comcast determined the same home that its own sales rep promised used to have Comcast service was now suddenly too far away from Comcast’s infrastructure. If it decided to offer Seth service, the company quoted an installation fee approaching $60,000.

Seth consulted the FCC’s Broadband Map which depicted Kitsap County a veritable paradise of competition, with at least 10 providers fighting for his business. But Seth quickly realized the FCC’s map was misleading and inaccurate.

Four of his options were wireless carriers that don’t provide a strong signal to his home or charge obscenely high prices for usage capped Internet access. ViaSat was on the list promising up to 25Mbps, but ViaSat satellite customers can testify the actual speeds received are much slower, and do not reliably support the VPN access Seth required.

Neither Comcast or CenturyLink offer broadband service to Seth, despite the fact both told the FCC they did for the purpose of its map. StarTouch uses microwave signals to reach its customers, but not in Seth’s part of Kitsap County. It seems someone put up a large building in between StarTouch’s transmission facilities and Seth’s home, blocking the service for a significant part of the county.

XO Communications does provide reliable T1 service to businesses at speeds from 1.544Mbps – 6Mbps. The biggest downside is its cost — $600 a month. Finally, Seth’s only other alternative is a gigabit fiber network run by the Kitsap Public Utility District. But cable companies like Comcast effectively lobbied to guarantee those types of networks would never be a competitor by pushing for laws that forbid retail service to individual homes or businesses. In Washington, the law only allows the utility district to sell wholesale access to its network to companies like… Comcast.

In the end, Comcast decided it wasn’t interested in serving Seth even if he found the $60,000 to cover the installation fee. CenturyLink shrugged its shoulders over why it isn’t offering DSL in Seth’s neighborhood. Seth is preparing to put his home back on the market. It’s a perfect choice for Luddites everywhere.

The moral of the story?

• Comcast is not always forthcoming and honest when signing up customers and led Seth through two months of missed appointments and misinformation;
• The accuracy of the FCC’s broadband availability map is questionable.