AT&T U-verse cabinets attract unsightly trash and graffiti in San Francisco.

After a unanimous vote by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors further restricting AT&T’s U-verse above-ground cabinets and extending the public a larger say about their placement, AT&T filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court claiming the company’s rights have been violated.

In 2011, supervisors voted 6-5 in a controversial decision to let AT&T install up to 726 metal cabinets in the city, connecting AT&T’s fiber network to existing copper telephone wiring. Since that vote, AT&T has installed almost 200 boxes that are supposed to avoid blocking pedestrian travel, curbs or fire hydrants and are kept away from street corners. But after the city received hundreds of complaints — mostly about pervasive graffiti — AT&T suspects the city intentionally slowed approval of more boxes.

AT&T’s lawsuit specifies the city has denied permits for 26 of the boxes since November without offering alternate locations. AT&T also accuses San Francisco of taking more than 60 days to approve or reject another 67 permit requests.

The last straw seems to have been the unanimous passage of a bill introduced by Supervisor Scott Wiener giving more weight to public comments about the cabinets. The new policy also requires AT&T to propose multiple locations on permit applications, preferably not on main thoroughfares, as well as requiring AT&T to install graffiti-resistant boxes.

San Francisco’s 311 hotline has processed hundreds of complaints showing repeated graffiti attacks on AT&T’s boxes. In many cases, AT&T has not directly responded to the city regarding the complaints, although most have been addressed eventually.

AT&T says any further restrictions on its U-verse expansion, including public input, violate state law.

In most states, so long as AT&T confines its box installations to the public utility easement, it can choose locations for its boxes without consultation.

In some states, particularly North Carolina, this has resulted in large 4-foot tall, unsightly lawn cabinets appearing in the front yards of residential homes. In several instances, multiple cabinets are installed side-by-side and are protected from traffic by nearby bollards that further extend the equipment’s footprint.

“The U-verse boxes are always placed adjacent to or across the street from an existing interconnect box,” notes San Francisco resident Bryce Nesbitt. “AT&T has chosen not to invest in a combined box that would reduce impact on the public realm. One slightly larger interconnect box could take the functions of the dual interconnect/VRAD solution AT&T is pushing everyone to accept.”

AT&T’s solution for rural Americans without access to broadband service arrived this week with the introduction of an $80/month plan bundling a mandatory wireless home landline with a 10GB usage-capped Internet plan.

AT&T Wireless Home Phone and Internet has undergone market testing in selected northeastern areas (largely outside of AT&T’s landline service territory). This week the service became available nationwide and is marketed to customers disconnected (or soon will be if regulators approve) from AT&T’s traditional landline service. AT&T is petitioning to dismantle its rural and outer suburban wired landline network and transfer customers to wireless service. But AT&T’s wireless replacement is both expensive and usage capped with an allowance that is just a fraction of what AT&T DSL offers:

• Customers start with a $20/month wireless landline phone replacement, powered by AT&T’s wireless network. Customers will keep their current phone number and home phones and will be sent a “Home Base” device that will interface between AT&T’s wireless network and up to two telephones. AT&T does not permit its device to be connected to your existing home phone wiring, so it strongly urges customers to buy cordless phones. The device is portable so it can be taken with you when traveling. The standalone service offers unlimited nationwide calling, Voicemail, caller ID and call waiting;
• Those interested in also purchasing broadband can add one of three different data plans: $60 for 10GB, $90 for 20GB and $120 for 30GB. AT&T charges a $10 overlimit fee for each extra gigabyte. You cannot buy broadband service unless you also subscribe to AT&T’s wireless landline product. That means the lowest possible price for rural broadband is $80 a month for up to 10GB of usage. Access may be over AT&T’s 4G LTE network (5-12Mbps maximum speeds) or their much-slower, but more common 3G network. In contrast, AT&T sells DSL for as little as $15 a month with a 150GB usage allowance included.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ATT Wireless Home Phone Internet Intro 5-2014.flv[/flv]

AT&T introduces its new solution for rural America — wireless home phone and Internet service, at a price much higher than what urban customers pay. (1:42)

AT&T’s Home Base

AT&T’s Wireless Home Phone and Internet includes plenty of fine print and disclaimers:

• A two-year service commitment is required to avoid a $199 charge for the Home Base device;
• 911 service is not guaranteed and you will be required to give your physical location to the 911 operator so they can send help to the proper address;
• A backup battery powers the Home Base allowing up to 1.5 hours of talk time and 18 hours of standby time. However, a standard corded phone that does not need electric power to operate is required to place or receive calls (including 911) during a power outage;
• Not compatible with wireless messaging services/text messaging, home security systems, fax machines, medical alert & monitoring systems, credit card machines, IP/PBX Phone systems, or dial-up Internet service. May not be compatible with DVR/Satellite systems;
• Call quality, wireless coverage, and service reliability are not guaranteed;
• Well-qualified credit approval required;
• An activation fee (undisclosed) also applies.

There are many surcharges that also may apply, including a $35 restocking fee, federal, state, and local taxes and the universal service fee. Customers must also pay AT&T-originated fees kept by AT&T, including a $1.25 “cost recovery charge,” a gross receipts surcharge, administrative fees and any government-originated assessments that AT&T passes on to customers in various states.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ATT Wireless Home Phone Internet Setup 5-2014.flv[/flv]

AT&T explains how to set up and configure its Home Base to receive phone and broadband service wirelessly. (3:16)

The New York Times recommends the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission reject Comcast’s $45 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable, if only because the combined company will have an unregulated choke-hold on telecommunications services not seen since the days of the regulated AT&T/Bell monopoly.

In an editorial published Sunday, the newspaper called out many of the “merger benefit”-talking points claimed by the two cable giants as specious at best, hinting some even bordered on misleading:

By buying Time Warner Cable, Comcast would become a gatekeeper over what consumers watch, read and listen to. The company would have more power to compel Internet content companies like Netflix and Google, which owns YouTube, to pay Comcast for better access to its broadband network. Netflix, a dominant player in video streaming, has already signed such an agreement with the company. This could put start-ups and smaller companies without deep pockets at a competitive disadvantage.

There are also worries that a bigger Comcast would have more power to refuse to carry channels that compete with programming owned by NBC Universal, which it owns. Comcast executives say that they would not favor content the company controls at the expense of other media businesses.

The company argues that this deal would not reduce choice because the company does not directly compete with Time Warner Cable anywhere. Comcast would face plenty of competition in high-speed Internet service, they say, from telephone and wireless companies.

The reality is far different. At the end of 2012, according to the FCC, 64 percent of American homes had only one or at most two choices for Internet service that most people would consider broadband. Wireless services can handle streaming video, but many customers of Verizon or AT&T would blow through their monthly wireless data plan by streaming just one two-hour high-definition movie, at which point they would have to fork over extra fees.

Comcast executives argue that companies like Sprint are planning to provide very fast Internet service that will compete with wired broadband. But wireless companies have been working on such services for more than a decade with little success.

Those wireless services that do exist uniformly impose low usage caps and cost considerably more than traditional wired broadband plans, especially when considering the cost compared to the actual speed delivered to consumers.

The Times doesn’t believe imposing a litany of conditions in return for approving the deal, similar to those involving Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal, would be sufficient to protect consumers from monopoly abuse.

“This merger would fundamentally change the structure of this important industry and give one company too much control over what information, shows, movies and sports Americans can access on TVs and the Internet,” concluded the newspaper. “Federal regulators should challenge this deal.”

Comcast has at least 40 lobbying firms working on its merger deal with Time Warner Cable.

It’s shock and awe time in D.C. as Comcast pulls out all the stops to ram its $45 billion deal with Time Warner Cable down Washington’s throat.

The Hill reports Comcast is assembling one of the biggest lobbying teams ever seen inside the beltway, hiring at least seven additional lobbying firms on top of the 33 it already retains. Their mission: to pressure legislators and overwhelm regulators to accept the merger deal and ignore the critics.

The lobbying firms are loaded to the rafters with D.C.’s frequent revolving-door travelers — former legislators, staffers, regulators and their aides that worked in the Clinton and Bush Administrations who now work on behalf of the companies many used to oversee.

On Comcast’s generous payroll: former aides for the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House and Senate Judiciary committees, in addition to the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission — precisely the agencies that will review the merger for anti-trust concerns.

“If you’ve worked on the committees, or if you’ve worked in an agency overseeing a transaction like this, you’ve got knowledge about how the process works and credibility with the staff — it’s that simple,” one lobbyist told the newspaper.

A quick review of some of the players from The Hill:

Comcast says you must have the option to pay more for the same broadband service you already get, only now with an allowance

Comcast has announced it is considering testing an innovative new plan in several test markets offering “unlimited Internet access” to customers for a yet-to-be-determined price. Whoever heard of such a thing?

Comcast’s executive vice president David Cohen raised eyebrows last week when he predicted all Comcast customers nationwide would see usage-based billing for their Internet access within five years.

Such statements tend to muck up things like a $45 billion dollar merger with Time Warner Cable that both companies must prove is in the public interest. The buyer wants to limit your Internet usage and the seller got its fingers burned back in 2009 when it tried its own usage cap experiment and now advertises it has no data caps.

Telling Time Warner Cable customers it is in their best interest to lose unmetered Internet plans may be too tough to sell, so Cohen has spent much of this week backtracking and claiming he was “misunderstood:”

To be clear, we have no plans to announce a new data usage policy.  In 2012, we suspended our 250 GB data cap in order to conduct a few pilot programs that were more customer friendly than a static cap.  Since then, we’ve had no data caps for any of our customers anywhere in the country.  We have been trialing a few flexible data consumption plans, including a plan that enables customers who wanted to use more data be given the option to pay more to do so, and a plan for those who use less data the option to save some money.  We decided to implement these trials to learn what our customers’ reaction is to what we think are reasonable data consumption plans.  We certainly have no interest in adopting any plans that our customers find unreasonable or disruptive to their Internet experience.

It’s important to note that we remain in trial mode only.   We’re now also looking at adding some unlimited data plans to our trials. We have always said that as the Internet, and our customers’ use of it, continues to evolve, so will Comcast and our policies.

Cohen makes a careful distinction between a strict usage limit and the kind of usage-based billing that will fill the company’s coffers with overlimit fees. But any usage allowance is a limit of how much you can use the Internet before something bad happens — either your access is shut off or your bill explodes.

Stop the Cap! has talked with more than a dozen customers in Comcast’s test markets about their experiences with Comcast’s “data usage policy.” Although the company claims it is seeking customer reactions, it never asks whether those customers want usage limits or not, only what kind.

Giving customers “the option to pay more” is exactly the type of thinking that won Comcast the dubious distinction of being the worst company in America. No usage plan tested by Comcast actually offers savings to customers. It simply places an artificial, arbitrary usage allowance on the overpriced broadband service the company offers now.

At this point, Comcast is not offering any unlimited use trials, but we have learned the value they are likely to place on “unlimited” based on what certain customers have paid all along for that privilege. Ars Technica reports some avoided the 250GB cap by signing up for business class service. The cost? $133.79 a month for 50/10Mbps. If Google Fiber was in town, you’d pay $70 for unlimited 1,000/1,000Mbps service, and the search engine giant would still be making money.

Cohen claims nothing is set in stone, but considering Comcast’s “don’t care” attitude towards its customers, it is a safe bet they will do what is best for shareholders and ignore complaints from customers that often have nowhere else to go for 21st century broadband speeds.