Robert D. Marcus has plenty to be excited about. After less than two full months on the job as CEO, he agreed to sell Time Warner Cable and exit his management role if and when the merger is approved. But he won’t be hurting, because he negotiated a bountiful golden parachute that will award him more than $56 million in exit compensation the day he leaves.

Courtesy: Jacobson

That is but one example of the kind of “innovation” Comzilla will offer Time Warner Cable customers. Others include charging top dollar cable modem rental fees, a broadcast TV surcharge, a completely arbitrary usage cap on broadband service, and an offshore customer service experience even more despised than what Time Warner Cable customers get. 

Without actual head-to-head competition, there is no doubt we will hear executives crow to Wall Street that a supersized Comcast has plenty of room to raise broadband prices even higher and to cut company investments in innovation it won’t need to succeed in a controlled duopoly market.

AT&T and Verizon executives — Comcast’s largest competitors — have shrugged their shoulders about the merger deal, believing it will have almost no effect on their bottom lines. Why should it? Comcast has found a growth formula that works — a tap dance away from competition — buy out other cable companies to grow the customer base instead of winning ex-customers back with better service and a lower price.

It appears Marcus’ grand vision for turning Time Warner Cable around with a massive investment in faster speeds and better service is now dead. All that is left on the table is the vague notion of a “significant investment to improve reliability and to enhance our customer service.” In other words – we’ll do a better job to make sure the service you already pay big money to receive actually works and we’ll do a better job answering our phones.

Survey results show the proposed merger is not at all popular with Time Warner customers.

Nothing about Marcus’ spammed e-mail to customers is likely to change that perception.

Charles Dolan, Cablevision CEO

Cablevision Systems Corp.’s board of directors have been sued by an investor for wrongfully approving “grossly excessive” compensation for Chairman Charles Dolan and members of his family who serve as executives at the fifth-largest U.S. cable company.

The board of Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision, which includes Dolan’s three daughters, approved more than $80 million in pay and benefits for the firm’s founder and his son over the last three years while the company piled up financial losses, according to the plaintiff’s suit.

Charles Dolan founded the cable company in 1973. Although others at the company have taken a larger role managing its day-to-day operations, Charles still won approval of $41 million in compensation for himself over a three-year period beginning in 2010. His son James was awarded $40 million, despite the fact he seems to be losing interest in Cablevision, preferring to devote more time to his rock band – JD & The Straight Shot – where he serves as lead singer, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiff alleges the compensation packages were excessive and a waste of corporate assets at a time when Wall Street analysts criticized the cable company for underperforming financially.

“The Dolans treat Cablevision as a family coffer, routinely entering transactions with the company that have improperly favored the Dolan family’s interests over the interests of the company and its public stockholders,” said shareholder Gary Livingston, who filed the suit.

What the Dolan family wants, they usually get. The family collectively hold shares that control about 73 percent of the company’s voting rights.

It isn’t the first time the Dolan family — now billionaires — have found themselves in court over compensation issues. In 2008, the company’s top executives agreed to pay more than $24 million to settle shareholder lawsuits accusing them of benefiting from stock option grants that were backdated.

Livingston’s case is an example of “baseless shareholder lawsuits designed simply to enrich the plaintiff and his lawyers,” Charles Schueler, a Cablevision spokesman, told Bloomberg News today in an e-mailed statement.

A wireless Internet Service Provider serving rural northeastern Indiana has successfully challenged Frontier Communications’ application for federal funds to introduce DSL service in the region.

Great American Broadband (GAB) challenged Frontier’s request for funds from the Connect America Fund to wire homes in the Wells County community of Uniondale. It turns out the Bluffton-based wireless ISP already provides service to the community, making Frontier’s request redundant.

GAB’s OnlyInternet serves around 3,000 customers in Adams, Allen, Blackford, Delaware, Elkhart, Grant, Howard, Huntington, Jay, LaGrange, Madison, Randolph, Tipton, Wabash, Wells and Whitley counties. Founded in 1995, the wireless ISP uses a network of towers to offer a high-speed service comparable to Wi-Fi to residents who generally cannot get broadband from any cable or telephone company.

The FCC found Uniondale was already sufficiently served by OnlyInternet and denied funds earmarked for Frontier’s proposed expansion into the community of about 300. Wireless ISPs have had a hard time successfully defending their turf from phone companies that can subsidize expansion of their DSL service with federal tax money or funds provided by other telephone ratepayers. Many wireless ISPs are family owned and financed by private bank loans and small investors. They do not appreciate subsidized competition, particularly from the Connect America Fund, which is generally only available to telephone companies.

“We have to look out for the interests of our members,” Rick Harnish, executive director of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association in Ossian, told the Journal Gazette. The group alerted OnlyInternet of Frontier’s FCC filing for rural dollars. “The Connect America Fund is a subsidy program set up for phone companies, which is why wireless providers are left out. We continue lobbying for equitable treatment, but we’re a small voice compared to the bigger companies.”

Rural ISPs have taken about a $10 million chunk out of Frontier’s application for $71.5 million in Connect America Funds by successfully challenging the phone company’s applications around the country. In general, Connect America Funding for broadband expansion is available only to unserved areas where customers cannot get broadband service.

In northern Indiana, Frontier can use the federal money to offer services in parts of Huntington, Jay and Wells counties.

Frontier is still free to use its own funds to wire Uniondale for DSL service, and customers might welcome the competition.

OnlyInternet currently provides wireless service at speeds ranging from 512/128kbps ($24.95) to 3Mbps/768kbps ($64.95). Until last year, Frontier generally provided most rural communities with up to 3Mbps broadband, but has upgraded service to speeds ranging from 6-40Mbps. Most of the higher speeds are available only in urban areas.

Comcast is dumping a blizzard of cash on Capitol Hill in a late winter storm of lobbying to win approval of its $45 billion buyout of Time Warner Cable.

Politico reports Comcast’s money is bipartisan, with generous checks going into the campaign coffers of Texas Republican Ted Cruz and Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin. In fact, the news site reports Comcast has donated to almost every member of Congress who has a hand in regulating the cable company.

In fact, the only three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that have not received a contribution from Comcast are Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)

That Franken did not receive any Comcast cash comes as no surprise after the senator sent his supporters e-mails blistering the merger.

“Comcast reportedly has an army of over 100 lobbyists ready to swarm Capitol Hill and whose goal is to push this through,” Franken wrote. “Their top priority is Comcast’s bottom line — not whether this deal will be good for consumers. There’s also a pretty cozy relationship between Comcast and the regulators that will evaluate this deal, which I find troubling.”

When Politico asked members of Congress whether the generous contributions from the cable giant would influence their thinking about the merger deal, none had any comment.

It’s much the same story in the House of Representatives, according to Politico:

Comcast spreads the cash around.

On the opposite side of the Capitol, the House Judiciary Committee is readying another hearing on Comcast — and many of its members also are familiar with the company’s financial support. Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), for example, has received $15,000 this cycle from Comcast, some for his leadership PAC and the rest for his personal campaign.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee and its Senate counterpart so far haven’t scheduled their own reviews of the new Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal. But both panels do regulate Comcast by way of their broad jurisdiction over Internet, cable and telephone issues, and they have been canvassed almost entirely by Comcast contributions. The company has given to 50 of 54 of the House committee’s Democrats and Republicans, donating either to their reelection campaigns or their leadership PACs, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data from Jan. 1, 2013 to Jan. 31, 2014. And Comcast has donated in some way to 20 of 24 lawmakers on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

There has been a total of $12,500 in checks for Walden, the leader of the telecom subcommittee, to both his personal coffers and leadership PAC. Comcast also has given $2,500 to Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), a contender to lead Democrats on the full Energy and Commerce panel following the retirement this year of California Rep. Henry Waxman — another recipient of Comcast support.

Albert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute, which opposes the merger, says Comcast’s contributions began long before the merger deal, but that is a well-considered strategy.

It’s “proactive giving,” said Miller, “so that when a corporation needs access in a time of trouble, investigation or oversight, they have already built the quote-unquote relationships they need to soften or make their arguments to a sympathetic audience.”

AT&T says it plans to adopt fiber to the home service in cities around the United States as part of an expansion of its U-verse GigaPower service.

CEO Randall Stephenson told investors at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Telecom, and Media Conference the “cost dynamics” of fiber optics have become “really encouraging” in its targeted fiber deployment in Austin, Tex.

“In fact I would tell you we are so encouraged that we want to begin taking this to other communities [where] we can get the terms and conditions like we have in Austin,” Stephenson said, referring to Austin’s red-tape cutting and clearing the way for fiber upgrades with eased permit requirements and pole attachment policies. “We are redirecting investment to fiber to the home deployment, and in fact we are going to launch the service in Dallas this summer.”

Stephenson added that where U-verse faces significant competition from a “new competitor,” AT&T will be “a little more aggressive and assertive in deploying that technology around the country.”

That most likely means AT&T will choose fiber to the home service in areas facing imminent competition from Google Fiber or another similar provider.