Sources close to the Clinton campaign told Politico three names are emerging as potential FCC nominees in a presumed Clinton Administration, and all three are close friends of Bill and Hillary Clinton, all have spent time traveling through the revolving door of D.C. politics and the private sector or lobbying, and one served as a FCC commissioner before under Bill Clinton’s presidency.

All three are classic D.C. Establishment types, so there should be no surprises or rebellion from within the Democratic ranks.

Ness

Susan Ness: A former FCC commissioner, Ness today serves as a top Clinton fundraiser. Prior to her FCC appointment, Ness was a senior lender to communications companies as a group head and vice president of a regional financial institution. She served as Assistant Counsel to the Committee on Banking, Currency and Housing of the U.S. House of Representatives, and she founded and directed the Judicial Appointments Project of the National Women’s Political Caucus. Ness is a member of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Committee on Communications, the Federal Communications Bar Association, and Leadership Washington (Class of 1988). Before she joined the FCC, she served in many civic leadership roles, including chair of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Charter Review Commission; vice chair of the Montgomery County Task Force on Community Access Television; and president of the Montgomery County Commission for Women.

In her favor, Ness didn’t end her service with the FCC and become a paid lobbyist, preferring to spend her years outside of public service in the private sector. However, she was a director for Adelphia, America’s first criminally convicted cable company (the principal owners, the Rigas family, went to prison for a variety of white-collar crimes). Ness was also an apologist for the disastrous telecom deregulation policies of the Clinton Administration, which backfired and created mass corporate consolidation and higher bills for consumers.

In a speech in January 1999, Ness promised good times were ahead because of Clinton Administration’s support for deregulation:

It takes good business planning, raising capital, provisioning, and investment before the fruits of competition can be harvested. And sometimes companies succeed and sometimes they fail. That’s the marketplace at work.

That’s why I’ve been somewhat surprised at the impatience with which some pundits have viewed the level of local competition under the ’96 Act.

On the first anniversary, folks were asking “where’s the competition?” I observed then that this was like piling the family into the car for a long trip, and, before you’ve reached the end of the driveway, there is a plaintive voice from the back seat, “Are we there yet?”

No, we’re not there yet — even now, two years further into the journey.

Kornbluh

Unfortunately for Americans, we’re still not there more than 15 years later. The marketplace and regulatory agencies have rigged the game into a comfortable duopoly where competition benefits exist primarily for new customers getting a sign-up promotion. Once expired, high prices predominate. Ness promised competition. We got consolidation and more deregulation instead, and Americans are paying some of the highest broadband and wireless prices in the world as a result. We’re uncertain if she has learned her lesson.

Karen Kornbluh: Her middle initials should be “D.C.” because she’s been there for so long. Kornbluh is the Democratic Party establishment through and through, with a record of public service dating back to the 1980s. From 1991-1994, she was a legislative aide for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) She spent two years at the Treasury Department, then spent three years as a Tech Fellow at the New America Foundation think tank. She served as a policy director for Barack Obama when he was a senator from Illinois and was appointed as ambassador to the OECD in 2009, which means she is at least aware of how poorly the U.S. compares in broadband speeds to the rest of the world. Kornbluh will not rock the boat as a FCC commissioner, but should be a reliable vote for all of a presumed President Clinton’s telecom initiatives.

Phil Verveer serves as a senior counselor to current FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler, which may offer some continuity for Chairman Wheeler’s policies under the Obama Administration in a presumed Clinton Administration. Verveer is a longtime friend of the Clintons. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy with Ambassadorial rank from 2009 to 2013.

Verveer

Verveer has practiced communications and antitrust law in the government and in private law firms for more than 40 years.  From 1969 to 1981, he practiced as a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, as a supervisory attorney in the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission, and as the Chief of the Cable Television Bureau, and the Common Carrier Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission.  Between 1973 and 1977, he served at the Antitrust Division’s first lead counsel in the investigation and prosecution of United States v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., the case that eventuated in the divestiture of the Bell System.  As a bureau Chief at the FCC, Verveer participated in a series of decisions that enabled increased competition in video and telephone services, introduced asymmetric telecommunications regulation, and limited regulation of information services. But he was also a telecom lobbyist or counsel for Willkie, Farr and Gallagher (1999-2005) and Jenner & Block (2006-2009).

With those three names now out in the public view, Big Telecom lobbyists are reportedly “coalescing around those perceived to be frontrunners for a commission spot,” reports Politico.

“Nearly everyone on the list is part of the Clinton campaign’s network of tech advisers, which helped draft the Democratic nominee’s tech policy platform,” Politico adds, which means it is likely what Secretary Clinton has promised in her campaign documents about future telecom policy will likely move forward under the stewardship of her potential appointees who helped write it.

Several Arizona residents have reported receiving e-mail allegedly from Cox Communications requiring customers to update or upgrade their account, but in reality, the e-mail comes from a group of fraudsters trying to commit identity theft. The Pima County Sheriff’s Office has sent an open warning alerting cable customers in Arizona and beyond that if you receive an e-mail claiming you need to update or upgrade your account, disregard it, especially if it carries a deadline that warns your service will be disconnected if you don’t respond within a matter of days.

Customers who click on a link in the email will be taken to a phony Cox Communications website, where you will be prompted to provide your username, password and birth date. The sheriff’s office warns providing this information could start a series of criminal events that will not end well:

Why does this company need your birthdate? They want to steal from you. Do not provide any information to the purveyors of this scam.

Two vital pieces of information the fraudsters are always looking for are your date of birth and Social Security number. Anytime you are asked for this information over the phone in a call you did not initiate, or in an email from an unknown source, stop and ask, “Why?” Who wants to use this information?

If you receive requests that you have not initiated or you have not placed the call — a red flag should appear. Do not provide this information unless you know for a fact to whom you are speaking.

Your date of birth and/or Social Security number give the fraudsters have all the information they need to begin identity theft. The scammers can now open accounts in your name, make high-volume charges and ruin your credit. They are capable of doing this without your knowledge.

If they were to attack your established accounts first, your bank or credit card company may notify you of possible unauthorized activity. However, we have knowledge of unauthorized accounts operating for long periods of time while making large-dollar purchases. The scammers make minimal payments until the account is maxed out. Since the statement comes to a phony address established by them, the credit card company has to make a concerted effort to locate you because you no longer are making payments on this “zombie” account. When the company finally calls you, you are in shock! You had no knowledge of this account.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Office recommends consumers obtain a free credit report every four months by staggering requests for a free annual credit report from the three major credit reporting agencies. This will identify any new accounts you might be unaware of and prevent identity thieves from causing catastrophic damage to your credit score and reputation.

• EQUIFAX: P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA. 30371, 1-888-766-0008.
• EXPERIAN: 701 Experian Pkwy. Allen, TX. 75013 1-888 EXPERIAN (397-3742)
• TRANSUNION: Fraud Victim Assistance Div., P.O. Box 679, Fullerton, CA. 92834-6790. 1-800-680-7289.

A yearly report including credit reports from all three agencies is also obtainable at no cost by calling 1-877-322-8228 or visiting www.annualcreditreport.com.

Charter Communications is taking a hard line against extending promotional pricing for Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks customers and Wall Street predicts a major exodus of customers as a result.

UBS analyst John Hodulik predicts Charter’s new ‘Just Say No to Discounts’-attitude will result in customers saying ‘Cancel’ and he estimates a massive loss of at least 75,000 Time Warner Cable television customers in the third quarter as a result, with many more to follow.

Charter Communications’ executives have ordered a hard line against giving existing customers discounts and perpetually renewing promotional pricing, a practice Time Warner Cable has continued since the days of the Great Recession to keep customers happy.

Time Warner Cable and to a lesser extent Bright House have learned antagonized, price-sensitive customers were increasingly serious about cutting cable’s TV cord for good when the cost becomes too high to justify. Time Warner Cable dealt with this problem by giving complaining customers better deals, often repeatedly. That mitigated the problem of customer loss, allowed the company to retain and grow cable television customers and even helped minimize the practice of promotion shopping common in competitive service areas.

For years, Time Warner and Bright House customers learned they could enroll in a year-long promotion with the cable operator and then switch to a year-long new customer promotion from AT&T U-verse or Verizon FiOS and then jump back to the cable company with a new promotion. In many cases, they even got a gift card worth up to $300 for their trouble. Charter Communications thinks their new “pro-consumer policies” of not charging rapacious equipment fees and sticking to “simplified” prices will delight customers enough to keep their loyalty. Good luck.

Licensed to print money

Wall Street doesn’t believe Charter’s reputation or their ‘New Deal’ for TWC and BH customers will be perceived as making things better, especially for cable television and its cost. As customers roll off promotions at Time Warner Cable, the bill shock of watching rates rise up to $65 a month will speak for itself. The higher the price hike, the more likely it will provoke a family discussion about dropping cable television service for good.

In Los Angeles and Texas, where Charter premiered its new “simplified pricing” for Time Warner Cable customers, the response has been underwhelming, with many customers deriding it as “simply a price hike.”

David Lazarus, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, characterized the transition from TWC to Charter this way: “Meet the new cable company. Same as the old cable company.”

Culver City resident Jack Cohen provides good evidence of what happens when customers get their first bill from Charter, and it is higher than expected. Cohen received his first bill for $162, $22 more than his last Time Warner Cable bill of $140 a month, because his promotion with TWC expired. As a result, he canceled cable television after Charter wouldn’t budge on pricing. Cohen said “cancel” and never looked back. He now pays the new cable company $40 less than he gave Time Warner Cable, because he now only subscribes to broadband and phone service. Charter’s ‘simplified pricing’ cost the cable company more than the $22 extra they were originally seeking.

Lazarus learned when his own TWC promotional package expires in December, Charter had a great Christmas present waiting… for themselves. Lazarus’ $65 promotion will rise to $120 a month — almost double what he used to pay. But Charter also offered Lazarus a better deal he can refuse, a new Charter-Spectrum package of the same services for the low, low price of $85 a month — still a 30% rate hike.

In Texas, customers coming off promotions are learning first hand how Charter intends to motivate customers to abandon the Time Warner Cable packages Charter promised they could keep — by making them as unaffordable as possible and offering slightly less expensive Charter/Spectrum packages as an alternative.

“But it’s still $45 more than what I was paying Time Warner Cable for the same damn thing,” complained Ty Rogers to a Charter retention specialist, after his Time Warner Cable shot up once Charter took over. He is waiting for Google Fiber to arrive and then plans to cancel everything with Charter.

Charter’s billing practices also are dubbed the weirdest in the cable industry by The Consumerist, because Charter loves to hide taxes, surcharges, and fees by rolling them into other charges on the bill and cannot be accurately accounted for:

Charter breaks out federal, state, or local taxes and fees for some services (TV) but not for others (voice). Also, depending where you live and when you signed up for services, the taxes, fees, and surcharges that do appear may be listed under different sections of the bill or not at all.

While their procedure does result in many fewer line items for consumers, it does produce more confusing bills overall, and make it harder to compare against other providers in a truly apples-to-apples kind of way.

‘No, no, no,’ counters Charter/Spectrum to FierceCable.

“Our internet packages are competitively priced, but we offer faster starting speeds and don’t charge an additional modem lease fee on top of the cost of service (that is an additional $10 at legacy TWC),” Charter spokesman Justin Venech said. “That pricing is better and more attractive to customers. Our video packages are simpler and more robust. For example, our Spectrum Silver package includes over 175 channels plus premium channels HBO, Showtime and Cinemax while a comparable TWC package would have charged extra for premiums.  We don’t add on additional fees and taxes to our voice product that our competitors do, and our equipment pricing for video set-top boxes are much lower with Spectrum than our competitors or legacy TWC or BHN.  Our new Spectrum pricing is $4.99 for a receiver vs over $11 at legacy TWC.”

“That assumes, like every cable company always does, that we want HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax, don’t already own our own cable modem, and are not dancing in the streets over an even bigger television package filled with crap we don’t want,” said Rogers. “Charter also takes away Time Warner’s excellent long distance phone service, which let me call almost all of Europe without any toll charges or an extra cost calling package. I paid Time Warner $10 a month and could talk to someone in France all night long if I wanted. With Charter, it’s more for less.”

Rogers’ promotion included his DVR in the promotion, so comparing Charter’s $4.99 vs. TWC’s $11 for a DVR made no difference to him either.

“You can argue all day about the ‘value’ you are offering, but you can’t argue your way out of a bill that is $45 higher than last month,” Rogers complained.

Overall, the latest spate of cable mergers and AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV has been bad news for consumers, who face fewer competitive prospects and a new, harder line on promotional pricing. AT&T customers are discovering AT&T is more motivated to get U-verse TV customers to switch to DirecTV and less interested in providing discounts. The cable competition knows that, making fighting for a better deal much tougher if Charter’s only competitor in an area is AT&T. Cable operators also understand there is a built-in reluctance to switch to satellite by a significant percentage of their customers.

Charter’s pre-existing customers not a part of the TWC/BH merger are not too happy with Charter’s Spectrum offers either. At least 152,000 video customers said goodbye for good to the cable operator’s television packages.

Hodulik predicts there are more where that came from as the rest of the country gradually discovers what Charter has in store for them.

Frustration at Frontier Communications doesn’t stop with customers. Employees are also speaking out about the company’s inability to manage their growing acquisitions and offer good service to customers. Others are confused about major company priorities and initiatives that suddenly get dropped, and customer service representatives feel like they are cheating customers selling them products and services that are better in name only.

Three employees this month provided unsolicited letters asking Stop the Cap! to publicize the problems at Frontier because their managers are not listening and they want corporate management to step in and make necessary changes.

“Sally” (we have chosen pseudonyms to protect the authors’ identities) is a customer service representative at a major Frontier call center in Florida. She is saddened by the company’s “Wells Fargo” culture — pushing customers to buy products and services they don’t need just to make their sales numbers.

“Frontier has been pushing us hard to sell customers on our Frontier Secure suite of products, which adds anything from $5 to $25 to your bill and is supposed to protect you from identity theft, damaged devices, viruses, and provide technical support for your electronics,” Sally tells Stop the Cap! “Unfortunately, it sounds much better than it actually is because there are so many exclusions and restrictions. I’ve heard complaints from customers who bought into the program thinking it would protect their home computer, but then after a lightning strike did its damage, it turns out Frontier doesn’t cover “home-made” computers which means anything other than a computer you buy in a store and never upgrade.”

Sally recounts stories about her managers pushing Frontier Secure at every opportunity, because the profits that come from providing services many customers will never use are astounding.

Frontier has a plain jane blog.

“They even push us to sell virus protection on tablets and smartphones like the iPhone, which is generally ridiculous,” Sally wrote. “What is horrifying to me is that the people most likely to say yes to our sales pitches are our elderly customers who have simple landlines and we’re not even sure they have a computer to protect. But they like the identity protection, which is supposed to monitor your credit and cancel your credit cards if your identity is stolen. What we don’t tell you is you can do most of that yourself for free and if you call a bank to report identify theft, they can notify every bank to either put a hold on your credit or reissue new cards. It costs nothing.”

Sally says Frontier’s “Premium Technical Support” often relies on employees Googling for instruction manuals and then reading them back to customers. That service starts at $12.99 a month.

“Instead of selling people better internet access or more reliable phone service, we’ve gone into gimmicks and it’s embarrassing,” reports Sally.

“Jim” is a former Verizon senior technician who is now working for Frontier Communications in Texas. He says he spends several hours a day navigating confusion between Verizon’s long-standing processes for managing network issues and his new supervisors who are dealing with Frontier’s completely different corporate culture.

“If you ever wondered why it takes so long to get something done with Frontier, I can tell you — it’s the bureaucracy and a culture clash between the two companies,” writes Jim. “Working for Verizon’s wireline division was already stressful over the years because they were not investing very much in wired services and we’d learn to manage that by hoarding things and trying to keep issues as local as possible, but Frontier is a giant headache. When a customer needs something from us, often we cannot give the customer a good estimate of when he or she will get what they need because we don’t know ourselves. But we are told to ‘be optimistic’ or ‘be vague’ which is why there are a lot of broken deadlines or disappointments. They never tell us to lie, but we cannot level with customers either because many will bolt to Time Warner Cable or Charter if we told them the God honest truth. We have business and residential customers promised certain broadband performance by sales that we cannot give them because they are not FiOS-enabled. If you were promised 75Mbps and got 6Mbps, you’d start shopping around, too.”

Jim writes the cutover between Verizon and Frontier would have gone much smoother if the company culture of “not in my job description” was not so pervasive.

Who cares if the fine print is in English.

“Frontier was given old data from Verizon because we haven’t spent serious money on certifying the accuracy of our databases in years and nobody bothered to verify it before acting on it, and that is why a lot of customers lost their service,” writes Jim. “Verizon is at fault here too because when you work at a giant company like this you learn the company culture is to know your job responsibilities and don’t exceed them. Frontier people seem to be more flexible to a point, but they are also real good at avoiding getting caught holding the bag when something goes wrong, so important tasks or ongoing problems can be neglected because nobody wants to get the blame or feel like they are exposed when management shows up wondering why things aren’t working right.”

“It can be a career and promotion death sentence to be someone willing to stick their neck out and solve problems if your manager or their manager doesn’t like what you’ve done, actually helped create the problem you are trying to solve, or if you are perceived as ‘too negative.'”

Paul, a Frontier Communications employee in the mid-Atlantic region, echoes Jim’s concerns that managers don’t really appreciate hearing criticism. Paul is one of the many workers tasked with keeping Frontier’s website and e-commerce functions up and running. A former Verizon worker, Paul has been shocked by the ineptness of management that has resulted in some serious embarrassments at Frontier.

Frontier’s website is unique among significantly sized telecom companies because one cannot actually place an online order for service or even provide accurate speed and pricing information because the company gave up on trying to make sure those features were reliable. Paul reports managers were warned about the functionality problems but refused to listen.

“[They tell] employees to take ownership of issues, yet when we try to do that very thing we are overruled and our opinions are discounted at every turn,” writes Paul. “Prior to the very first rollout of [Frontier’s redesigned] website I informed [management] that the site had severe performance issues, but was told […] I needed to keep my opinions to myself and the vice president decided to launch the site anyway.”

As a result, Frontier’s website crashed and remained offline and/or disabled for a week, reports Paul.

Another satisfied customer in Texas?

Out of the blue “priorities” also suddenly arise that require workers to scramble, with less than excellent results. One day, managers told the software team there was an urgent need to launch Spanish language functionality for the website. But because of the rush, employees not well-versed in the language produced a Spanish-language website that has been derided by customers for its frequent use of “Spanglish” and lack of professionalism.

“They pushed Spanish language very hard and told us that it HAD to be in production before the April 1st cutover with Verizon because of the high frequency of Verizon customers that were used to this feature,” writes Paul. “Once we put it out there, every time there is an issue with Spanish on our site they tell us that it’s only one percent of traffic so they aren’t all the that concerned with it. Then when there is an issue with it they ask us why we didn’t test it. But they refused to give us the needed time to test it because they just wanted to push it out the door and move on to the next project.”

Paul also echoes what Sally in Florida is concerned about — a lack of integrity in Frontier’s marketing department.

“I have never worked for a more unethical company and I used to work for Verizon so that is saying something,” writes Paul. “[Frontier charges] customers for ‘Digital Phone Service,’ but it’s really just copper facilities. They call it “Digital” because it is working out of a digital switch. They change verbiage to make something sound better than what it really is. They say we have a 100% U.S.-based company but then hire IT folks overseas to do some of the work. They spend more money on sponsoring football teams than they do upgrading equipment and infrastructure.”

Charter Communications is wasting no time looking for increased shareholder value by slashing jobs in states where regulators placed few, if any conditions on the acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

The Charlotte Agenda reports North Carolina-based Time Warner Cable employees are just starting to feel the pain of the multi-billion corporate cable merger, with the elimination of 258 jobs in Time Warner Cable’s accounting department in Charlotte. Nearly 20% of the workforce, including 70 senior accountants, 45 staff accountants, 44 accounting supervisors or managers, and an even larger number of finance analysts and accounts payable specialists will be collecting unemployment starting Nov. 1 and extending through the second quarter of 2017.

Company officials claim affected employees can seek employment with Charter Communications at other office locations around the country.

North Carolina regulators effectively rubber-stamped the acquisition of Time Warner Cable in granting its approval. The only condition Charter Communications has to meet is notifying North Carolina’s Department of State Commerce at least 30 days before those unlucky employees are out of a job.