Verizon has been upset with the tone and accuracy of many New Jersey residents who have written the state’s Board of Public Utilities urging them to reject a settlement offer than would allow Verizon to walk away from its commitment to deliver high-speed broadband to 100% of the state.

While calling many of its opponents misinformed about the company’s original commitments, a Verizon spokesperson targeted a particularly nasty response to one of its strongest critics — Teletruth’s Bruce Kushnick, who has accused Verizon of breaking its promises in New Jersey and substituting outdated DSL and expensive, usage-capped 4G wireless broadband as a broadband equivalent.

Northwest, central and southern New Jersey all lack solid broadband coverage. (Map: Connecting NJ)

Kushnick has argued that Verizon has cooked the books, diverting funds that should have been spent on FiOS expansion into its more profitable wireless subsidiary Verizon Wireless instead. He wants New Jersey to conduct a thorough investigation of Verizon’s financial reporting and learn why the company has reneged on a broadband commitment that originally promised a minimum of 45/45Mbps high-speed broadband for 100% of the state by 2010 in return for rate deregulation and tax breaks. Verizon got the deregulation and tax breaks but much of the state is still waiting for the faster broadband it was promised.

Now Verizon wants the state to approve a settlement that will redefine its commitment from 45/45Mbps to 4Mbps DSL or wireless 4G broadband.

Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynski said criticisms about the company’s performance in New Jersey are “way off base.” He said there never was any commitment to deploy FiOS across all of New Jersey because FiOS did not exist at the time of the original agreement.

“Nobody knew what FiOS was 20 years ago,” Gierczynski said. “It wasn’t until 2004 when FiOS came on the scene.”

What about the 45/45Mbps speed commitment?

“[The agreement] didn’t say a minimum of 45Mbps,” Gierczynski said, “it just says ‘up to’.”

Gierczynski particularly bristled over Kushnick’s ongoing criticisms of Verizon.

“For nearly two decades, he has made the same, tired baseless allegations over and over again about Verizon and its predecessor companies — not only in New Jersey but in other states as well,” Gierczynski told The Record in an email. “His specious arguments are devoid of fact, relying on misinformation and myths to prop up his claims. This filing is no different.”

With more than 1,000 comments on file with the BPU, Verizon invited the regulator to dismiss critics that demanded Verizon live up to its original commitments:

“The vast majority of comments opposing the Stipulation that have been posted by the Board to date were submitted via a standard form letter generated by the New Jersey State AFLCIO with the subject line “Tell Verizon to Live Up to the Opportunity New Jersey Agreement.”

“Other comments opposing the Stipulation offer inaccurate claims about what was contemplated by Opportunity New Jersey or what is in the Stipulation.”

“AFL-CIO Letters:  These letters opposing the Stipulation appear less convincing when the locations of senders are examined— More than 25 are from people located outside of New Jersey and some appear to be from municipalities not in Verizon’s service territory. “

Verizon did not bother to mention the circulation of a pro-Verizon form letter that was submitted by hundreds of people, many Verizon employees and retirees, as reported last week by Stop the Cap!

Two of those letters were signed by Paul A. Sullivan, Verizon’s regional president of consumer and mass business markets in New Jersey and Tracy Reed, a Verizon manager… in Atlanta. Neither identified themselves as Verizon management.

Further concerns were raised by Kushnick when he found that the people and businesses Verizon touts as supporting Verizon’s position all have some relationship with Verizon:

• New Jersey Technology Council — Board member,  Douglas Schoenberger, VP, Public Policy, Verizon NJ, Inc
• The Meadowlands Chamber of Commerce — Donnett Barnett Verley, Director of Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility, for Verizon New Jersey.  “I am responsible for Verizon’s philanthropic and community outreach efforts throughout the state. I serve as an active board member of …the Meadowlands Chamber of Commerce.”
• Greater Paterson Chamber of Commerce — “Hi. I’m Rick Ricca, Director – External Affairs. I am responsible for the company’s relationship and interaction with municipal and county governments… I also serve on… Greater Paterson Chamber of Commerce.”
• The Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey (“CIANJ”), Member of the Board, Sam Delgado V.P. Community & Stakeholder Affairs Verizon
• Greater Elizabeth Chamber of Commerce — “Verizon, a telecommunication company received the Member-to-Member Award for its important contribution to Elizabeth’s business.”
•  Cooper’s Ferry Partnership —Verizon is on the Board of Directors. “The organization’s operational budget is currently divided into three main categories: board membership… investments from these valued partners that has allowed CFP to grow its mission and expand throughout the city of Camden.”
• Puerto Rican Association for Human Development —“Verizon Presents $20,000 to PRAHD”
• Latino Institute  — Our Partners and Funders, Verizon
• Gudino, David Joseph — Associate General Counsel, Verizon Wireless
• NJ SHARES —“Verizon New Jersey partners with NJ SHARES for Communications Lifeline outreach and enrollment efforts.”

“In fact, it’s hard to identify any legitimate group that supports the Verizon stipulation and is not funded by Verizon,” said Kushnick.

Telecom Italia (TI) has a big problem. While AT&T charges the average American $66 a month for mobile service, competition in Italy has forced wireless prices down to $18 a month for comparable service.

TI chief executive officer Marco Patuano wants the price cutting to end and traveled to the United States to learn from AT&T how it was able to raise prices and increase customer spending with usage-capped Internet, phone and television service. His self-described “innovation trip” brought him straight to the office of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson.

TI is trying to end years of losses and sales declines precipitated by falling prices and a growing disinterest in traditional landline service. AT&T accomplished that by boosting investment in mobile services. AT&T charged high prices for unlimited data plans until demand for data grew to the point the company could earn much more metering Internet usage. As a result, AT&T has earned a staggering $100 billion over the past decade from boosted phone bills.

Patuano

Patuano wants to find a way to follow in AT&T’s footsteps as TI’s share price has fallen more than 70 percent over the last six years. Fierce competition from Vodafone and VimpelCom have forced prices down across Italy. With prices so low, investors have shown little interest in providing funding for wholesale upgrades to 4G wireless service. In turn, that has kept Telecom Italia from offering faster data speeds which would allow them to raise prices for service.

In North America, high wireless prices and the relative lack of competition have brought considerably better financial returns for investors. That high rate of return has attracted investment allowing providers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless to spend billions on network upgrades that have, in turn, further increased revenue at both companies. Customers benefit from the faster speeds, but also pay for the privilege with some of the highest wireless prices in the world.

It’s a formula Patuano wants to bring to the Italian market, but he needs more investment to stabilize TI’s finances. TI was the government-owned phone company until it was privatized in 1997. Despite having a massive customer base, nimble wireless competitors have outflanked the phone company and the results have been falling sales, disconnected customers, and its $37 billion in debt reduced to junk status by investor rating services. The company sold its headquarters in Milan and got rid of its Argentine subsidiary, along with suspending shareholder dividends.

“The first target now for a phone carrier is upgrading networks and transform it to a platform for high-value services,” Patuano said. “This is exactly what AT&T did and what we are calling for.”

Patuano has seen AT&T defend its turf in the wireline business by scrapping its traditional landline/DSL-only service in larger markets in favor of a hybrid fiber-copper network dubbed U-verse. Patuano is now pondering whether TI could deliver a package of phone, broadband and television service over a broadband platform. The average AT&T U-verse customer spends $170 a month on U-verse, an amount much better than $18 a month. TI could do even better than AT&T because Italy lacks many cable television providers — Italians depend on satellite television for multichannel pay television.

AT&T and TI are no strangers to one another. In 2007, AT&T attempted to buy a stake in the Italian phone company but met with a storm of objections from Italian politicians. AT&T dropped the idea soon after.

JPMorgan Chase reports average cable rates reached $88.67 in 2013. (Image: The Oregonian)

Cable TV rates are too low and need to be hiked to boost revenue and offset rising programming costs, even if rate increases further alienate cable subscribers, according to a new report from JPMorgan Chase.

The Wall Street bank concluded customers have few options, noting that after providers raised prices around 5% last year, they lost only 0.1% of subscribers.

“Cable operators are better off raising video prices than eating higher content costs,” said Philip Cusick, a JPMorgan analyst, in the report. “Our analysis indicates that cable companies are better off raising prices and catching customers with broadband if cord cutting becomes widespread, (rather) than eating the programming increase.”

The bank recommends imposing (or raising) broadcast TV and sports programming surcharges as well as general rate hikes on basic cable service.

JPMorgan notes that increased broadband pricing and cable modem rental fees paid off for the industry during the fourth quarter of 2013, when earnings topped estimates. By doing the same for cable television packages, providers can continue to boost revenue with little risk customers will find a suitable competitor that isn’t also increasing prices.

Even if customers get rid of cable television, a practice known as cord-cutting, cable operators can still keep customers by providing broadband service. Some of the lost revenue can be recovered from the services customers have not canceled.

Cusick says the industry is being challenged by a handful of content companies that increasingly dominate the cable package, among them Walt Disney, Time Warner (Entertainment), CBS, and FOX.

“With the majority of content controlled by only six or seven programmers, aggregate prices for content are rising around 10% annually and forecasts in many media models continue that rise for years,” Cusick said.

Sometime in the future, your cable company could begin activating built-in RFID or NFC chips inside mobile devices to gather information about a viewers’ presence and mood to deliver customized programming and advertising.

CableLabs has filed a patent application that details technology that can activate facial recognition, presence and movement detection or other device driven means for detecting movement, behavior, stress, biometric information or other features that may help your cable company understand how you are watching (or not) various cable programming.

This technology effectively builds on patents already filed by Comcast and Verizon that use near field communication (NFC) technology to deliver personalized programming and verify whether you are authorized to view any particular subscription video content.

Theoretically, if the technology detects signs of depression, the viewer might see an advertisement for an anti-depressant. Older viewers could be shown customized ads for mobility aids or reverse mortgages. Programming recommendations could also be made based on the gender or age of the viewer, including enforcement of parental restrictions if a younger viewer is detected in the room.

Most of this technology was designed to be installed inside camera-equipped set-top boxes, but utilizing mobile devices equipped with suitable detection equipment could also be used for similar purposes.

Fierce Cable notes much of the patent application focuses on strategies for measuring viewer engagement, which CableLabs notes can be determined by tracking when the volume up or down button on a remote control is pressed. “Volume down or mute on “American Idol” means more than on a Charlie Chaplin movie or nature program with aquatic footage,” inventor Jean-Francois Mulé writes in the patent application.

Privacy advocates are likely to be concerned about efforts to implement the technology if customers are not well-notified about its use and given the option to opt out.

Telus is notifying customers in Prince George, B.C. and surrounding areas it will begin imposing usage-based billing for Internet service effective April 21.

Despite claims that implementing usage-based charges will save customers money, nearly every Telus broadband user is already paying a higher bill because of a rate increase announced in late January.

Telus’ usage allowances range from 15GB a month for High Speed Lite users to 400GB for Telus Internet 50 users. Telus is also imposing a scaled overlimit fee system based on the total amount of excess usage. Customers face a $5 overlimit fee for up to 50GB of overuse to a maximum of $75 for 350GB and above. A typical customer with a 150GB usage allowance using 250GB would pay the usual $55/month broadband charge plus a $25 overlimit penalty, raising the price of service to $80.

Starting in June, Telus will introduce an Unlimited Internet Usage option (price not disclosed) for any of their Internet plans.

Telus wants to fence in “data hogs” with “fairness.”

“It’s fair that people pay for how much they use, as you would with any other service,” Telus explained. “Our goal is to offer customers a broad spectrum of plans that meet everyone’s needs, and to get customers on the right plan for them.

“Someone who uses their basic Internet service for a bit of email, Skyping with the grandkids, and sharing photos shouldn’t pay as much as someone who games and downloads hundreds of gigabytes of videos every month,” Telus added.

Of course, every customer is already paying more after Telus raised its broadband rates on Feb. 26.

“The cost of managing, expanding and improving our network continues to rise,” Telus explained. “We’re doing our best to keep rate increases as moderate as possible, while still offering great services, flexibility and good value.”

So effectively no customer is actually saving any money with Telus’ usage-based billing. They are actually paying more today and could potentially pay much more when overlimit fees take effect later this month.