Hawaiian non-profit customers of Time Warner Cable are receiving letters warning the cable company is terminating its discount program for charitable and community groups that could result in rates more than doubling for some customers.

Oceanic Time Warner Cable had provided free or heavily discounted cable or Internet service to qualifying organizations. Those discounts are ending, explains a letter obtained by Pacific Business News.

Time Warner Cable has adopted new policies regarding discounted or free service in light of IRS regulations that require 1099 forms to formalize the value of discounts or forgiven cable bills. The cable company is using the occasion to review its discount programs – ending some while tightening requirements for others.

“If we do not receive a reply from you within 30 days of this notice to update your account, it will be necessary for us to disconnect your existing services,” the letter explained.

Becky Dunning, managing director for the non-profit Honolulu Theatre for Youth called Time Warner to learn what “update your account” meant.

“The biggest thing is that when I called the number I was told that they aren’t offering discounted rates to nonprofits anymore, and that we’d have to pay their existing business rates; for our organization that means we would go from paying $106 a month to $227, which is a big difference — more than double,” Dunning said. “We can’t exist without Internet service.”

Dunning said the group would probably stay with Time Warner and attempt to make up the difference from somewhere in the organization’s budget.

Frustrated YouTube fans have complained all year about degraded performance, videos that don’t play, and endless rebuffering of online videos. Now a third-party has placed the blame for this on YouTube’s owner Google, which is allegedly running server farms overloaded with YouTube video traffic.

Sandvine’s Dan Deeth argues that super fast broadband speed and the providers that deliver it are not always the best indicators of subscribers’ ‘Internet quality of experience.’ More important, Deeth writes, is how well an Internet-delivered application or content works for consumers.

Broadband users typically blame their Internet Service Provider when a website refuses to load or an online video staggers from one “buffering” pause to the next. But the bottleneck is sometimes beyond the control of your provider and may even reside at the content distribution network sending you the streamed video.

Among the most frustrating online video experiences this year comes from YouTube, owned by Google. Users complain videos never start, timeout, constantly buffer, or downshift to lower video quality.

“The enormous increase in ads all seem to play fine, but there are dozens of times the video itself never begins at all or quickly times-out to rebuffer,” said James Bellwar.

Hyun Soo Park, a YouTube contributor that earns side income from sharing ad revenue says YouTube is getting hopeless.

“My fans are giving up and are occasionally even angry at me because they think I am responsible for the ads that play fine and the videos that do not,” said Hyun.

Blame Google, says Deeth:

We can rule out ISPs being the root cause of YouTube’s quality issue. Instead, we can conclude that the root cause of the degradation in quality is likely occurring because of an oversubscription in the Google server farm (where YouTube is hosted) which makes YouTube unable to meet high lunch time and evening video demand. This oversubscription would result from a commercial decision by YouTube to regarding how much capital they wanted to invest in server capacity to maintain quality.

For those interested in examining further, YouTube has a ‘my speed benchmark’ that seeks to measure ‘maximum demand’. You can use these benchmark tools to not only view your historical YouTube performance, but also measure in real-time the performance of a video you are viewing.

YouTube performance at Stop the Cap! HQ

While consumers are caught in the middle of the finger-pointing, there is a solution to keep YouTube videos from endlessly buffering. PC World offers a way to force YouTube to send the entire video instead of the current system that only pre-buffers small segments of content. Make sure to browse the comment section in the article for tips on getting it to work with your browser.

Malone

So far Dr. John Malone isn’t getting very far with his ambitious plan to merge Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable into a single cable company, but that has not stopped him from trying.

GDP Insider reports Malone is quietly keeping the pressure on Time Warner Cable management to do a deal with Charter. Malone controls a substantial interest in Charter Communications.

Liberty Media, a holding company controlled by Malone, is spearheading the courtship under the direction of Greg Maffei, Liberty’s CEO. It’s a tall task, considering Time Warner Cable is a larger company than Charter.

Both men are betting they will get a friendlier reception after current CEO Glenn Britt retires at the end of the year.

TWC’s new chief financial officer, Artie Minson, isn’t exactly rebuffing Malone and Maffei.  Minson said that in the event of an acquisition or merger deal, the company will consider taking on more debt to help finance the transaction.

Many Charter shareholders are unconvinced such a deal is worth the amount of debt likely required to finance it, especially as cable television subscriber numbers continue to erode and the rate of new broadband sign ups has peaked.

Malone has argued a combined Charter-Time Warner Cable could realize savings in cable and broadcast retransmission fees through volume discounts.

Media General today issued a statement saying they have failed to reach a retransmission consent agreement with DISH Network and 18 local stations in the eastern half of the country are off the satellite provider’s lineup as a result.

The stations:

• Alabama: WVTM-NBC in Birmingham, and WKRG-TV in Mobile
• Florida: WFLA-NBC in Tampa
• Georgia: WJBF-ABC in Augusta, WRBL-CBS in Columbus and WSAV-NBC in Savannah
• Mississippi: WHLT-CBS in Hattiesburg and WJTV-CBS in Jackson
• North Carolina: WNCT-CBS in Greenville, WNCN-NBC in Raleigh-Durham and WYCW-CW in Asheville
• Ohio: WCNH-NBC in Columbus
• Rhode Island: WJAR-NBC in Providence
• South Carolina: WCBD-NBC in Charleston, WBTW-CBS in Florence-Myrtle Beach and WSPA-CBS in Greenville-Spartanburg
• Tennessee: WJHL-CBS in Tri-Cities
• Virginia: WSLS-NBC in Roanoke-Lynchburg

“Our highly rated television station is an important asset to our local community and it is unfortunate that DISH does not recognize our fair market value,” said WNCN general manager Douglas Hamilton. “Although we have successfully completed agreements with other cable and satellite operators, DISH has refused to reach a similar agreement.”

Media General has been approving extensions of DISH’s retransmission contract since it expired in June, but the broadcast station group owner denied an extra extension of the contract that expired Sept. 30.

Media General is in the process of merging with Young Broadcasting — a deal that was also originally announced in June. DISH already has a retransmission agreement with Young and hoped to bundle the extension into that agreement, but Media General refused.

“The only reason for Media General to reject that offer is to try to squeeze consumers for more money, to the tune of five times what DISH currently pays,” said Sruta Vootukuru, DISH’s director of programming. “We’re working on behalf of our customers to keep the programming at a fair price.”

Affected Media General-owned TV stations are telling viewers to use a traditional antenna or switch to one of DISH’s competitors.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WNCN Raleigh WNCN Agreement With DISH Expires 10-1-13.mp4[/flv]

WNCN’s general manager Doug Hamilton explained to viewers why the station was no longer on DISH Network’s service in Raleigh, N.C. (1 minute)

The “breakthrough” unlimited data deal with AT&T didn’t last long.

When Apple first introduced its AT&T 3G-equipped original iPad, both companies marketed it with an unlimited 3G wireless Internet plan that soon became unavailable for new buyers and left grandfathered customers enduring a speed throttle when AT&T decided you used their network too much.

Burned customers banded together and sued both Apple and AT&T for bait and switch unlimited broadband. The two companies have now decided to settle, and as well as a whopper payout for the attorneys who filed the class action case, original iPad owners are going to share the proceeds:

• Customers purchasing a 3G-ready iPad before June 7, 2010 will receive a $40 check from Apple, even if you still have a grandfathered unlimited data account.
• Customers purchasing a 3G-ready iPad before June 7, 2010 who never activated an AT&T unlimited tablet mobile data plan will get a $20 discount off AT&T’s current $50 a month data add-on for up to one year.

Customers complained the steep price premium they paid for a 3G-equipped iPad wasn’t worth Apple’s asking price once AT&T removed the unlimited data option that Steve Jobs called part of a breakthrough deal.

Customers will not receive any awards until after February of next year, when the settlement is expected to be approved.