Stop the Cap! will formally participate in New York State’s regulator review of the proposed merger of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable.

“We will be submitting documents and testimony to the New York State Department of Public Service on behalf of consumers across the state that need a better deal from their cable company,” said Phillip Dampier, the group’s president. “A review of the current proposal from Charter is inadequate for New York ratepayers and most of Charter’s commitments for better service and lower prices expire after just three short years.”

Stop the Cap! will urge regulators to insist on significant changes to Charter’s proposal that will permanently guarantee a broadband future with no compulsory usage caps/usage-based billing, Net Neutrality adherence, affordable broadband to combat the digital divide, and upgrades that deliver faster broadband than what Charter currently proposes outside of New York City.

Dampier

“Upstate New York is at serious risk of falling dramatically behind other areas where Google Fiber and other providers are moving towards a gigabit broadband future,” Dampier said. “In most of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, and Albany buying the FCC’s definition of broadband means calling a cable company that now delivers no better than 50Mbps to residential customers. Verizon FiOS expansion is dead and obsolete/slow DSL from Frontier and Verizon should have been scrapped years ago.”

Stop the Cap! worries that with limited prospects for a major new competitor like Google in Upstate New York, broadband speeds and service will not keep up with other states. Verizon has devoted most of its financial resources to expanding its wireless mobile network, which is too expensive to use as a home broadband replacement. Frontier claims to be investing millions in its networks, but has delivered only incremental improvements to their DSL service, which in most areas is still too slow to qualify as broadband.

“Frontier is more interested in acquisitions these days, not upgrades,” Dampier argued.

“Although we have some entrepreneurs managing to deliver competitive fiber service in limited areas, it will likely take years before they will reach most customers,” Dampier added. “Upstate New York cannot wait that long.”

Comcast today officially announced speed increases for its broadband customers in the northeastern U.S. that includes a nearly 50 percent speed boost for its Blast! tier.

• Performance Pro: Customers subscribed to Comcast’s eligible triple play packages will get an upgrade to Performance Pro, raising speeds from 25 to 75Mbps;
• Blast!: Customers signed up currently for 105Mbps will soon see speeds of 150Mbps.

“We’ve invested tens of billions of dollars to create a network that makes broadband widely available to the most homes, and allows us to continually deliver the fastest, most reliable Internet and Wi-Fi speeds in and out of the home,” said Kevin Casey, president of Comcast Cable’s Northeast Division, which includes 14 states from Maine to Virginia and the District of Columbia.

The new speeds and tiers will be available to the vast majority of new and existing customers starting later this month. To get the new speeds, customers may need to re-start their modems. Comcast will also notify customers who may need to upgrade their modems to receive the increased speeds. Customers who lease modems from Comcast will be able to receive upgraded modems. A list of approved modems can be found online at http://mydeviceinfo.comcast.net/.

If Windstream was hoping to make a splash with its new Kinetic IPTV service, Time Warner Cable certainly isn’t reaching for a towel.

Kinetic debuted in April in Lincoln, Neb., the first community to get Windstream’s fiber to the neighborhood TV service. Three months after being introduced, it’s available in about half of the city. But it is not proving much of a threat to incumbent Time Warner Cable because Windstream set rates roughly the same or higher than what the cable company charges.

In fact, a Stop the Cap! reader contemplating a trial run of Kinetic was quickly dissuaded when he learned Windstream charged $10 more than what he already paid Time Warner Cable.

“Windstream either does not understand Time Warner’s pricing or is artificially trying to limit demand for the moment,” our reader tells us. “I have to believe it is one or the other because the alternative is they don’t know what they are doing and are creating an experiment built to fail. When I told Time Warner I was toying with the idea of trying Kinetic, they cut my bill another $30 a month and Kinetic is now dead to me.”

Time Warner Cable’s customer retention department is well positioned to keep customers because it can sell faster Internet speeds at a lower price than Windstream has offered so far. The phone company obviously has no interest in starting a price war in Lincoln:

• Windstream Kinetic offers packages ranging from $39.99-$129.98/mo;
• Time Warner Cable offers packages ranging from $19.99-$129.99/mo.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports other customers have had similar experiences.

Ryan Pryor said he inquired about Kinetic, but the price quoted was slightly more than what he now pays for a similar bundle with Time Warner and would have offered a slower Internet speed. So he chose to stick with what he has.

Where Windstream has had some success is attracting current satellite customers. Jason Smith was tired of losing satellite service during storms and since he was already a Windstream DSL customer, upgrading to Kinetic made sense.

“The picture quality has been very impressive,” Smith told the newspaper. “The one thing I noticed was how much better the picture looked than on DirecTV with the same HDMI connection to my TV.”

Smith is also happy with a more capable whole house DVR and the fact Windstream offers wireless set-top boxes.

But Smith also admitted he wasn’t sure if we would stick with the service long-term. A significant disadvantage of Kinetic is its reliance on copper wiring part of the way between Smith’s home and Windstream’s central office. All fiber to the neighborhood projects have bandwidth limitations that would not exist with a straight fiber to the home upgrade. Kinetic’s limits become clear when trying to watch three HD signals at once while being on the Internet. He can’t. Kinetic limits customers to two HD video streams at a time, compared with DirecTV’s five. Broadband speeds slow if other members of the household are also accessing telephone and television services.

With competition like that, Time Warner Cable has done little to strengthen its position, with no immediate plans to upgrade service in the city. All that has changed recently is a channel realignment that groups like-channels together starting at channel 100. Time Warner began that nationwide channel realignment in Syracuse, N.Y., in the spring of 2013. More than two years later, that change is only now reaching Lincoln.

Bryan Brooks, the Windstream vice president of business development, did not offer the newspaper many specifics about how Kinetic was performing, except to say demand has met expectations.

The headquarters building of U.S. satellite TV operator DirecTV is seen in Los Angeles, California May 18, 2014. REUTERS/Jonathan Alcorn

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – AT&T Inc’s proposed $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV is expected to get U.S. regulatory approval as soon as next week, according to people familiar with the matter, a decision that will combine the country’s No. 2 wireless carrier with the largest satellite-TV provider.

The Department of Justice, which assesses whether deals violate antitrust law, has completed its review of the merger and is waiting on the Federal Communications Commission to wrap up its own, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The FCC, which reviews if deals are in public interest, is poised to approve the deal with conditions as early as next week, according to three other people familiar with the matter.

All the sources asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak with the media. An AT&T spokeswoman and FCC spokesman declined comment. Justice Department representatives were not immediately available for comment.

AT&T’s merger with DirecTV, announced in May 2014, would create the country’s largest pay-TV company, giving DirecTV a broadband product and AT&T new avenues of growth beyond the maturing and increasingly competitive wireless service.

The deal has been expected to pass regulatory muster in contrast with the rival mega-merger between cable and Internet providers Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which was rejected in April largely over the combined companies’ reach into the broadband market.

The FCC and AT&T have been in negotiations over conditions for the merger for several weeks, the people said, adding that none of the conditions are controversial enough to break the deal.

Those conditions are expected to include assurances that both middle-class and low-income Americans have access to affordable high-speed Internet, including an offering of broadband subscriptions as a standalone service without a TV bundle, according to two of the people.

AT&T has earlier committed to expand access to broadband service in rural areas and to offer standalone Internet service at speeds of at least 6 Megabits per second to ensure consumers can access rival video services online, such as Netflix.

FCC officials are also considering ways to ensure that the conditions are properly enforced in the future, possibly through a third-party monitor, according to the two sources.

The FCC is also weighing how to ensure the merged companies abide by the so-called net neutrality rules, which regulate how Internet service providers manage traffic on their networks.

AT&T has promised to abide by net neutrality principles such as no-blocking of traffic, but is challenging in court the FCC’s newest net neutrality regulations that have expanded the agency’s authority over various deals between Internet providers and content companies.

FCC reviewers are weighing what net neutrality-related conditions to apply to the merger and how to address the possibility that the court throws out the latest rules, the two sources said.

Reported by: Alina Selyukh and Diane Bartz

Starting Sept. 1, Chicago residents will be paying 9% more for everything from Netflix to income tax filing as city officials impose a recently reinterpreted entertainment/use tax on almost every online subscription content provider, even those peddling adult entertainment.

The Chicago Tribune reports the city’s Finance Department has vastly broadened the reach of Chicago’s amusement and personal property lease transaction taxes to apply the 9% tax to virtually any content that a customer borrows, leases, or subscribes to that is not purchased outright. Buying a CD on Amazon.com would not be subject to the tax but a Spotify subscription allowing you to listen to that same CD as long as your subscription is maintained will be taxed. Buying a digital copy of a movie will not be taxed, but watching it through a subscription service like Apple TV, Amazon, or Netflix will be.

Although some are dubbing it the “Netflix Tax,” it will also apply to cloud storage, paid television programming — including satellite, cable, telephone, and online-delivered content, financial and investment services, and almost anything else accessed online with a paid subscription. Even paying to host a website (or having someone manage it for you) will be subject to the tax.

The expanded tax is part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s strategy to deal with Chicago’s huge budget shortfall with fees, fines, and broadening taxes. The city predicts the expanded tax will capture up to $12 million a year from Chicago residents and businesses.

“In an environment in which technologies and emerging industries evolve quickly, the City periodically issues rulings that clarify the application of existing laws to these technologies and industries,” mayoral spokeswoman Elizabeth Langsdorf said in a statement issued Wednesday. “These two rulings are consistent with the City’s current tax laws and are not an expansion of the laws. These ensure that city taxation is uniformly and fairly applied and that businesses are given clear guidance on the applicability of the City’s tax laws to their operations, and they clarify that the amusement tax and personal property lease tax apply to digital services.”

Chicago residents have paid the amusement tax on movie tickets, local concerts and sports events since at least 1998. The city collects 5% on live theatrical, musical, and other live cultural performances held in an auditorium, theater, or other space whose maximum capacity (including balconies) is more than 750 persons. A 9% tax applies on all other events, but no tax is collected on religious, charitable, and not-for-profit organizations holding events for fund-raising purposes as long as they limit them to two events per year.

A Netflix spokeswoman confirmed that the company will pass the additional cost to subscribers but said no other details were available.

Critics of the tax contend it will be very easy to avoid through the use of payment services like PayPal, which allow customers to specify an out-of-state address — any out-of-state address, valid or not — in the payment details box, allowing residents to avoid the tax. Others are adding the addresses of out-of-state relatives to their credit cards and will use those addresses when placing orders for online content.

“Since they are not mailing you anything, it doesn’t really matter what address you use, as long as it is outside of the city of Chicago,” one anonymous commenter noted.

Wynne

That is exactly what Michael Wynne, a partner and attorney in the Chicago office of the law firm Reed Smith, predicted would happen, noting Chicago is already replete with high taxes and fees and adding more of them would encourage tax dodging. He assumed businesses will also actively avoid the tax, either by moving their offices out of the Chicago city limits or more likely renting a post office box in the suburbs and using it as a billing address.

“Let’s say I sign up for streaming business data in the city but I have offices throughout the country,” Wynne told the newspaper. “I will definitely make sure my billing goes through a different office.”

Wynne believes many Chicago residents may not understand the 9% tax will apply to a lot more than just Netflix. He called the expansion staggering in its breadth in his analysis, excerpted below.

The Unamusing Amusement Tax: It Could Apply to Almost Anything

The Amusement Tax ruling will extend the tax to streaming services for music, movies, games, and the like, as well as satellite TV delivered to a customer located in Chicago. However, the ruling does not impose the Amusement Tax on the same content when it is permanently downloaded by a consumer. The Lease Transaction Tax ruling extends the tax to the online procurement of real estate listings, car prices, stock prices, economic statistics, and “similar information or data that has been compiled, entered and stored on the provider’s computer.” In addition, under the ruling, the Lease Transaction Tax will apply to the online procurement of “word processing, calculations, data processing, tax preparation” and “other applications available to a customer through access to a provider’s computer and its software.” In the ruling, the Department expressly notes that these “examples are sometimes referred to as cloud computing, cloud services, hosted environment, software as a service, platform as a service, or infrastructure as a service.”

The Amusement Tax is imposed on patrons of every amusement within the city. “Amusement” is broadly defined, and it includes “any entertainment or recreational activity offered for public participation or on a membership or other basis,” and “any paid television programming, whether transmitted by wire, cable, fiber optics, laser, microwave, radio, satellite or similar means.”

The Amusement Tax ruling specifically taxes charges paid for the privilege of the following amusements delivered to a patron in the city: (1) “watching electronically delivered television shows, movies, or videos”; (2) “listening to electronically delivered music”; and (3) “participating in games, on-line or otherwise.” As a consequence, streaming a movie, listening to streaming music, or playing a game on a smartphone or tablet will now trigger a 9% tax on the subscription charge for those services if those activities are done at a location in Chicago. Furthermore, the ruling addresses “bundled” transactions, by providing that “unless it is clearly proven that at least 50% of the price” is not for the amusement, the entire charge, except for any separately stated non-amusement charges, is subject to the Amusement Tax. That suggests great care must be paid to invoicing services when including any item that might be construed to be an amusement. The ruling does not differentiate between news, current events, sports, movies, music or other types of television programming. As a consequence, an establishment that charges patrons for access to television programming of any sort, plus other goods and services (e.g., a bar that imposes an admission charge for a pay-per-view event that includes food and beverages) may have to navigate the bundling rules.

The Computer Lease Tax Ruling = 9% on Everything You Borrow, Subscribe, Rent, Lease, or Pay-Per-View Online

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) introduced H.R. 235: the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, which passed in the House of Representatives on June 9th and is heading to the Senate.

The ruling provides examples of when the tax applies, such as when performing legal research or similar on-line database searches, to obtain consumer credit reports, or “real estate listings and prices, car prices, stock prices, economic statistics, weather statistics, job listings, resumes, company profiles, consumer profiles, marketing data, and similar information or data that has been compiled, entered and stored on the provider’s computer.” In the ruling, the Department specifically identifies taxable leases of personal property to include “cloud computing, cloud services, hosted environment, software as a service, platform as a service, or infrastructure as a service.” This is quite an expansion for a concept evolved from taxing agreements for time-sharing on mainframe computers, and that has only been judicially tested once, involving legal research in the city on terminals provided by the legal search provider, in days that preceded the creation of the World Wide Web, and the expansion of fiber-optic networks that made possible the Internet networks relied on to deliver many of the services the ruling now targets. See, Meites v. City of Chicago, 184 Ill. App. 3d 887 (1989). The rulings represent a further evolution of the city’s approach under the Lease Transaction Tax to disregard contract terms and recharacterize transactions to fit its tax code definitions; it is doubtful that any consumer or provider of subscription Internet streaming services thinks they are contracting to lease tangible personal property.

Wynne says Chicago officials have expanded the scope of its tax ordinances to their absolute limit, if not further. He also fears Chicago could give other cities and states ideas for new taxes.

“If any state or local governments were wondering how to tax transactions occurring in the Cloud when legislative authority for such taxation is absent, the Department has just sketched a roadmap,” he wrote.

Wynne believes the time to stop these kinds of taxes is now, before they have a chance to spread, or worse, start being collected.

He writes there are strong arguments that Chicago’s creative reinterpretation of its 9% tax is illegal, running afoul of the Federal Telecommunications Act, the Internet Tax Freedom Act, and federal and Illinois constitutional limits on taxation. But while the rulings are likely to be challenged in court, Chicago officials still expect providers to start handing over the 9% tax proceeds beginning this fall. Those that don’t will run into Chicago’s tax penalty buzzsaw – 12% interest on delinquent taxes, a 25% penalty, and a lengthy bureaucratic process (bring your attorney) dealing with the city’s administrative hearings office.