Effective today, I am making some policy changes affecting our Comments section.  It is important for everyone to understand that organizing a pushback against usage caps means putting aside non-germane issues that really don’t help to keep people focused on the issues here.  Therefore,

1. This is not a “right” or “left” issue.  We have people from all political points of view here, each concerned for their own reasons or beliefs why caps are bad.  Some feel this is a slippery slope towards controlling what people do online, others see it as a corporatist agenda to reduce competition and abuse market power.  Some seek a regulatory approach, others want competition in the free market, and many more want a combination of the two.  They are all valid, and it’s okay to offer different solutions.  But this is not the fault of any political party, past or current president, or federal official.  After 20 years of watching this industry, there are both Democrats and Republicans who support or oppose our views on these issues.  It’s remarkable how bi-partisan the good and the bad ideas are.  A Democrat in the North Carolina legislature is pushing the anti-municipal broadband legislation.  Republicans in Texas have largely not been receptive to appeals from constituents about usage caps.  In short, you’ll find good and bad all over, and we’ll need all of the good we can find, no matter what political party one aligns with.
2. Resist flame wars in the Comments section on other writers.  I am going to start purging the more egregious ones.  Argue and debate the issues, not each other.  It’s okay to have different opinions, and people should expect they might be debated about them, but let’s keep it above the belt.

The Comments system is now configured to allow you to edit your comments for up to 30 minutes after they are written.  If you are particularly annoyed with someone, you might consider writing the reply in a text editor, saving it, and waiting a few hours/next day before you paste it into the comments editor and send it.  Heat of the moment replies are often regretted later.

Thanks for helping out.

A source and one of our commenters has told StoptheCap! that Time Warner’s news operation in Rochester was asked not to report on yesterday’s critical service outage pending the arrival of an official corporate statement on the matter.  R-News has traditionally operated with a firewall in place between the newsroom and Time Warner Cable’s executives.  R-News was not supposed to answer to Time Warner Cable in how they handle their coverage.  Now there are questions about whether that firewall remains in place.

As of this afternoon, there was no mention of yesterday’s service outage on the R-News website at all.

NorthEast Radio Watch, which in my opinion is an essential weekly read for any and all things broadcast related in the northeast, has heard the same information.  Scott Fybush, who writes the weekly online newsletter, reflected on this and his past employment there as a reporter:

TWC did a remarkably poor job of getting the word out about the extent of the outage and its attempts to rectify the problem. At least here in Rochester, TWC’s phone lines were, understandably, in a state of constant busy for several hours.

So what about the cable news channels the company operates, such as R News in Rochester? We’re hearing that the word came down from upstairs not to mention anything at all about the issue until an official statement was available, which turned out to be some time after the problems had been resolved.

Noting here that your editor is a former R News reporter – and that there was a little more editorial independence back in our days there – we’re wondering: if R News and its sister channels are no longer making any pretense of independent news coverage of their parent company, why not at least put those channels to use as a readily-available way to let customers know about big outages like this…and maybe even ease the pressure on overloaded call centers?

If your Road Runner and/or Digital Phone was impacted by yesterday’s service outage, you can request (they usually won’t give it unless you ask) a one day service credit.  Visit Time Warner Cable, select your service area, and the click the Contact Us button at the top.  You can send an e-mail message with your account information, and request a one day credit for the service outage on April 26th.  [Hat tip: Christopher, who brought this to our attention.]

Do they honestly think we’re that stupid?

The sudden announcement by the cable monopoly known as Time Warner to not cancel–but postpone its Road Runner internet metering/pricing scheme–is not a victory by any means. If anything, this company ought to be downright ashamed at insulting the intelligence of its Piedmont Triad customer base.

The Triad area of central North Carolina stretches into a 12-county area engulfing mid-size metros of Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem, about an hour from Charlotte and Raleigh, respectively. And while this area is not a tech-heavy base, Time Warner, unfortunately, has a cable monopoly here. AT&T and Clearwire are other providers of Internet service, but are not as big players here as Time Warner.

And while we’re an area that’s been in major transition even before the recession started (with a dwindling economic base, double-digit unemployment and a huge brain-drain), for this company to pull the stunt it attempted to pull off was laughable.

Its customer base was furious, and the outrage it caused in this area was enormous.

But company officials still believes tiered pricing is the best option for customers:

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said, “It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”

The (Greensboro) News-Record quoted Time Warner spokeswoman Melissa Buscher:

“It’s clear from the response we’ve gotten from Greensboro and other areas that there’s a lot of misinformation out there,” Buscher said. “What we heard is no one knows what their usage is.”

To solve that issue, Time Warner is developing ways to help explain the fee structure and educate customers on their usage. Buscher said the company is working on a Web site that customers could go to that would monitor their Internet usage, similar to some utility company sites.

Do you think your Triad customer base is that “backwoods” and uneducated, Melissa? Are we that stupid?

For a company that just announced big losses and layoffs in its core cable television business not long ago, one would think that perception, customer service and respect would be a priority. Sadly, that didn’t happen. And as a commenter said, it was Time Warner that was just educated by its customer base — now a dwindling customer base.

It is also saying a lot when it takes a U.S. Senator from NEW YORK to open his mouth for something to get done in North Carolina. The leadership (and response) in North Carolina to this issue was horribly pathetic; the response among our local representatives was equally paltry.

And for this company to say it will postpone its plans tells us that they plan to roll it out once again, eventually. What few customers this company has left by that time will be ready…to bolt. My household is already looking at what few options there are to shelve (using their words) Time Warner in favor of another provider.

What’s needed? Competition. Plain and simple. Our customer base is not stupid, but this issue squarely points out that our local leadership needs to get wise and get techno-savvy very quickly.

Erik Huey is a local community activist, a local public education and local media analyst and a communications/political strategist residing in south Greensboro. Huey is a former journalist for the High Point Enterprise and Las Vegas Review-Journal newspapers, a former reporter for various airline business trade publications in Washington, DC, and a one-time Guilford Co. Board of Education candidate in 2008.  Huey now runs Triad Media Watch, which monitors the media across the Triad.

Road Runner service is once again intermittent here at StoptheCap! headquarters.  After another round with the National Help Desk, who got Tier 3 local Road Runner support on the phone, we’re hearing that once again we have about 50% packet loss.  The tier three people are monitoring the connection during the day — the last time this happened it seemed to improve as the day wore on.  A service call is scheduled for tomorrow morning, but might occur sooner.  The support people are conducting themselves professionally and have expressed concern for our problems, which is appreciated.  They are assigning a senior technician to our case.

Frontier has two service trucks out here beginning work on our DSL problems, so it’s going to be an interesting day. If Time Warner dispatches repair crews here early, then I’ll put a cooler with soda out back and they can share with the Frontier people.

Just another Manic Service Call Monday for us….