Despite claims of improved customer service and better broadband, Comcast and Time Warner Cable’s customer satisfaction scores are in near-free fall in the latest Consumer Reports National Research Center’s survey of consumers about their experiences with television and Internet services.

Although never popular with customers, both cable operators plummeted in the 2014 Consumer Reports ratings — Time Warner Cable is now only marginally above the perennial consumer disaster that is Mediacom. Comcast performs only slightly better.

In the view of Consumers Union, this provides ample evidence that two wrongs never make a right.

“Both Comcast and Time Warner Cable rank very poorly with consumers when it comes to value for the money and have earned low ratings for customer support,” said Delara Derakhshani.  “A merger combining these two huge companies would give Comcast even greater control over the cable and broadband Internet markets, leading to higher prices, fewer choices, and worse customer service for consumers.”

These ratings reflect Internet service only.

Comcast ranked 15th among 17 television service providers included in the ratings and earned particularly low marks from consumers for value for the money and customer support.  Time Warner ranked 16th overall for television service with particularly low ratings for value, reliability, and phone/online customer support.

Another ratings collapse for Comcast and Time Warner Cable

Comcast and Time Warner Cable were mediocre on overall satisfaction with Internet service.  Both companies received especially poor marks for value and low ratings for phone/online customer support.

“In an industry with a terrible track record with consumers, these two companies are among the worst when it comes to providing good value for the money,” said Derakhshani.  “The FCC and Department of Justice should stand with consumers and oppose this merger.”

For as long as Stop the Cap! has published, Mediacom has always achieved bottom of the barrel ratings, with satellite fraudband provider HughesNet — the choice of the truly desperate — scoring dead last for Internet service. We’re accustomed to seeing the usual bottom-raters like Frontier (DSL), Windstream (DSL), and FairPoint (DSL) on the south end of the list. But now both Comcast and Time Warner Cable have moved into the same seedy neighborhood of expensive and lousy service. Comcast couldn’t even beat the ratings for Verizon’s DSL service, which is now barely marketed at all. Time Warner Cable scored lower than CenturyLink’s DSL.

Breathing an ever-so-slight sigh of relief this year is Charter Communications, which used to compete with Mediacom for customer raspberries. It ‘rocketed up’ to 18th place.

If you want top-notch broadband service, you need to remember only one word: fiber. It’s the magical optical cable phone and cable companies keep claiming they have but largely don’t (except for Verizon and Cincinnati Bell, among a select few). If you have fiber to the home broadband, you are very happy again this year. If you are served by an independent cable company that threw away the book on customer abuse, you are relieved. Topping the ratings again this year among all cable operators is WOW!, which has a legendary reputation for customer service. Wave/Astound is in second place. Verizon and Frontier FiOS customers stay pleased, and even those signed up with Bright House Networks and Suddenlink report improved service.

Ratings are based on responses from 81,848 Consumer Reports readers. Once again they plainly expose Americans are not happy with their telecom options. The average cost of home communications measured by the Mintel Group is now $154 a month — $1,848 a year. That’s more expensive than the average homeowner’s clothing, furniture or electricity budget. The same issues driving the bad ratings last year are still there in 2014: shoveling TV channels at customers they don’t want or need, imposing sneaky new fees along with broad-based rate increases every year, low value for money, and customer service departments staffed by the Don’t Care Bears.

U.S. wireless carriers are on track to earn more than $100 billion this year from usage-based billing plans for mobile data, the first country in the world to break the symbolic $100 billion mark in data revenue.

Analyst Chetan Sharma reports Verizon Wireless and AT&T are statistically the largest recipients of revenue earned from metering data usage. For the first time in 2013, mobile data revenue surpassed voice revenue in the U.S., making data usage the most lucrative product available from wireless carriers.

A graph from the Economist published last year explains the runaway revenue growth at U.S. wireless carriers. The lack of significant competition has allowed U.S. companies to charge an average of $85 a month for data plans, which are nearly always bundled into compulsory packages of unlimited voice calling and texting. In contrast, customers in China pay just $24 for data plans. In the United Kingdom, the average charge is $9 a month.

Sharma said the only disruption to this revenue growth in the United States comes from T-Mobile USA, which has recently cut prices on its service plans, forcing AT&T and Verizon Wireless to react with moderate price cutting. But with the significant disparity in market share between AT&T and Verizon vs. T-Mobile, neither larger carrier is expected to take a significant hit to their bottom lines without a mass exodus to the country’s fourth largest provider.

Softbank, the Japanese company that now controls Sprint, has launched a lobbying effort to secure permission to acquire T-Mobile and merge it into the Sprint network. But with reports showing T-Mobile’s willingness to disrupt the wireless market, regulators are likely to be reluctant to remove that competition from the playing field.

Comcast’s gateway

Some customers are angry and frustrated to learn Comcast has stopped “officially” allowing the use of customer-owned cable modems for its 105Mbps “Extreme” service, insisting subscribers rent a company-supplied gateway for $8 a month.

“Only Comcast issued equipment ensures that the specifications are always met and are not altered intentionally or unintentionally,” reads a technical bulletin issued by the cable company issued Feb. 26.

The new policy was discovered by a Comcast customer in Virginia having trouble with his broadband service. He was using his customer-owned Zoom 5341J — equipment on Comcast’s approved modem list.

“[A Comcast executive customer service representative] insisted that list is incorrect and I must rent a modem from them to receive the correct speeds on [the] Extreme 105 package,” writes ExoticFish on the Broadband Reports’ Comcast forum.

The bulletin, identified as ID TLK1043 and intended for the use of Comcast employees, explains:

Document ID TLK1043; Published February 26, 2014

Overview

Extreme 105 is the latest Comcast DOCSIS 3.0 XFINITY speed product, which provides extreme and unbelievable Internet speeds for customers. The product provides:

• 105Mbps download speed
• 20Mbps upload speed

Affected Areas

National.

Some of the Talking Points are not applicable for the Central Division.

Impact to Comcast

The Premium Installation fee for Extreme 105 is $249. Extreme 105 is installed by 105Mbps trained technicians. The Comcast Technician will:

• Conduct an in-depth analysis of the customer network.
• Ensure that the customer’s home and equipment are prepared to support the speeds included in the Extreme 105 service.
• Perform a node health check on the day of installation and also on a daily basis after installation.

Impact to Customer

Extreme 105 targets:

• Hard-core gamers
• Users with several computers in their house
• Users who upload and share multimedia files

Media Inquiries

Any media inquiries should be directed to the local market media team.

Q&A

Some of the Frequently Asked Questions and their responses are as below:

Why do I need to use Comcast issued equipment?
Only certified Comcast equipment delivers the ensured service speed attached to the customer’s account.

Comcast allows customers to use their own equipment for all your other Internet packages, why not Extreme 105?
Generally customers can use their own equipment and configure it as they see fit. But for Extreme 105, the configuration must be done and maintained at certain specifications. Only Comcast issued equipment ensures that the specifications are always met and are not altered intentionally or unintentionally.

But I have a DOCSIS 3.0 Modem and N Router, why do I need your versions?
Comcast installs equipment which have gone through extensive network certification process of Comcast and which have been proven in both laboratory and live network tests. This ensures that the equipment performs consistently and delivers the subscribed speed and services.

Does the $249 installation fee include installation of a wireless router?
Yes, the installation fee includes the installation of Comcast owned wireless router.

Why is there a premium installation fee for Extreme 105?
Extreme 105 is a premier Internet product by Comcast and the premium installation fee guarantees a speed of 105Mbps. A Comcast Certified Installation Technician performs additional tests which are not performed during installation of other premier internet service.

Is the premium installation fee refundable if I disconnect the service in 30, 60, 90 days?
The installation fee is non-refundable.

With Comcast reportedly preparing to boost speeds for its customers in the near future, those signed up for Comcast’s 50Mbps “Blast” tier could soon see speed upgrades to 105Mbps. That might expose those customers to the same mandatory rental charge.

The Virginia customer never realized Comcast changed its policies until he had service problems. It was then that a senior representative insisted the customer switch to Comcast’s rented gateway device if he wanted his service fixed. Other customers still using customer-owned equipment and subscribed to 105Mbps service may continue to fly under the radar for some time and there does not seem to be any national effort to contact customers about their equipment.

Some speculate Comcast’s new policy might also relate to the company’s intention to expand its Wi-Fi network relying on Comcast customers with gateway devices to serve as hotspots. That would likely require the use of Comcast’s own gateway to be successful.

Updated: 3/26/14 — 12:17pm ET — Karl Bode at Broadband Reports got an answer back to his inquiry about this issue and a Comcast rep tells him the service tech handing out the above-referenced memo is not correct:

The painful spelling and grammar errors in the last bit of the supposed company memo seemed a little off, so I reached out to Comcast for comment. The long and short of it is: no, this is not official company policy.

“We’re going to have someone try to reach out to the forum poster to follow up, but the short of it is there is no policy change,” Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas tells me. “Customers can buy or rent modems. Here is our approved devices list.”

Karl adds: “I’m still trying to ferret out why exactly this install technician was trying to push strange and unofficial company policy, and how and why he was using an incorrect and grammatically mangled memo to justify the behavior.”

Some customers flipping through Verizon FiOS TV’s on-screen guide were shocked to discover movies like “I Banged My Stepdad,” “Pigtail Teens Pounded,” and “Mom, Daughter and Me,” available for on-demand viewing and now the company is defending itself against charges it is a porn peddler.

Morality in Media’s 2014 Dirty Dozen List gives prominent placement to Verizon’s adult pay-per-view service, which includes hardcore pornography that implies underage sex and incest.

“Verizon needs to show some corporate responsibility,” Patrick Trueman, president and CEO of Morality in Media told FOX News. “America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography and that harm falls particularly hard on children. We are coordinating with the members of our coalition, numbering 146 groups across the U. S., to alert the public to Verizon’s pornography distribution.”

The conservative media watchdog group has drawn some support from those uncomfortable with the nature of some of the titles Verizon is making available for purchase.

Ari Zoldan, CEO of digital communications company Quantum Networks, told FOX “as Americans we believe in freedom of speech, but we also believe in protection of our children’s welfare and well-being first and foremost.”

Verizon defended its programming decisions as a matter of customer choice.

“The explosion in choice is a tremendous benefit to consumers, but not all consumers want to have access to all content for themselves and their families all of the time,” Verizon’s associate director for advertising and content standards John P. Artney wrote to Morality in Media. “Not all content is desirable to or appropriate for all consumers, however, and Verizon is proud to provide our customers with myriad tools to control the types of content that they and their families have access to through our service.”

Tracking Cable’s Top Internet Speeds

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) offers this infographic to suggest the deregulated cable broadband industry works well without any interference from meddling politicians.

Their claim: “Ongoing investments have enabled cable providers to continue boosting broadband speeds with top tiers increasing 50% every year.”

The reality: Cable’s broadband speed comes at a very high cost. The majority of Americans cannot buy 505Mbps residential broadband service from Comcast and even if you could, the price tag hovers around $300 a month, with a nearly-$1,000 early contract termination penalty, a $250 installation and $250 activation fee. Customers at other cable providers often find their maximum speed is just 50Mbps and/or their Internet usage is limited by a usage cap.

Google Fiber and some other gigabit fiber to the home providers are offering unlimited 1,000Mbps service for $70 a month with no installation or activation fee if a customer agrees to stick around.

Verdict: The cable industry could do better for much less.