GIVE us more money and TAKE what we offer you.

Bloomberg News is reporting what many of you already know — it is getting tougher to get a better deal from your cable or phone company.

As Stop the Cap! has documented since the completion of the Time Warner Cable/Bright House/Charter Spectrum merger in 2016, companies are pulling back on promotions, taking advantage of a lack of competition and offering best pricing only to new customers.

Charter Spectrum and Cable One (soon to be Sparklight) are the most notorious for implementing “take it or leave it” pricing. In fact, one of Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge’s chief complaints about Time Warner Cable was its “Turkish Bazaar” mentality about pricing. Rutledge claimed Time Warner Cable had as many as 90,000 different promotions running at the same time, typically targeted on what other companies were theoretically providing service and how serious the representative felt you were about canceling service. Time Warner Cable had basic retention plans available for regular representatives to offer, better plans for retention specialists to pitch, and the best plans of all to customers complaining on the “executive customer service” line or after filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau. There were plans for complaining over the phone and different plans for complaining at the cable store. Rutledge was horrified, because customers were now well-trained on how to extract a better deal every year when promotions ran out.

Last month, Rutledge said he was indifferent about cash-strapped consumers that cannot afford a runaway cable TV bill on a retired/fixed income or the urban poor who can’t imagine paying $65 a month for basic broadband service. To those customers, pointing to the exit is now perfectly acceptable. In fact, companies make more profit than ever when you drop cable television service and upgrade your broadband connection to a faster speed. That is because there is up to a 90% margin on internet service — provisioned over a network paid off decades ago and designed for much less space efficient analog television. Charging you $20 more for faster internet service is nearly 100% profit and costs most companies next to nothing to offer, and Time Warner Cable executives once laughed off the financial impact of so-called “heavy users,” calling data transport costs mere “rounding errors.” 

Even with a much tougher attitude about discounting service, Charter and Comcast are still adding new broadband customers every month, usually at the expense of phone companies still peddling DSL. So if you cancel, there are probably two new customers ready to replace you, at least for now.

Cable One redefines rapacious pricing. The company specializes in markets where the incumbent phone company is likely to offer low-speed DSL, if anything at all. As a result, they have a comfortable monopoly in many areas and price their service accordingly. Cable One’s basic 200 Mbps plan, with a 600 GB data cap, costs $65 a month, not including the $10.50/mo modem fee, and $2.75 monthly internet service surcharge. To ditch the cap, you will pay another $40 a month — $118.25 total for unlimited internet.

In fact, Cable One charges so much money for internet, they even have Wall Street concerned they are overcharging!

When Joshua May tried calling Spectrum to deal with the 29% more it wanted (around $40 a month) after his promotion expired, the customer service representative told him to go pound salt.

“I expected they’d at least offer free HBO or Showtime,” May, 34, of Springfield, Ohio, told Bloomberg News. “They did nothing.”

He did something. He cut the cord. The representative could have cared less.

The product mix cable and phone companies offer has not really changed, but the era of shoving a triple play bundle of internet, TV, and phone service sure has. Charter and Comcast now treat cable television as a nice extra, not the start of a bundle offer. Broadband is the key item, and the most profitable element, of today’s cable package. Beleaguered phone service gets no respect either. Time Warner Cable used to sell its triple play bundle including a phone line for less money than their double play bundle that omitted it. Today, it’s a simple $9.99/mo extra, given as much attention as a menu offering premium movie channels.

Comcast differs from Charter by offering a plethora of options to their customers. If you don’t want to spend a lot for high speed internet, spend a little less for low speed internet. Their television packages also vary in price and channel selection, often maddeningly including a “must-have” channel in a higher-priced package. Like Spectrum, their phone line is now an afterthought.

AT&T and Verizon have their own approaches to deal with reluctant customers. Verizon FiOS customers face steep price hikes when their promotions expire, but the opportunity to score a better deal is still there, if Verizon is in the mood that quarter. Verizon remains sensitive about their subscriber numbers and growth, so when a quarter looks like it will be difficult, the promotions turn up. AT&T prefers to play a shell game with their customers. Most recently, the company has given a cold shoulder to its U-verse product, treating it like yesterday’s news and best forgotten. AT&T literally markets its own customers to abandon U-verse in favor of AT&T Fiber. Verizon and AT&T treat their DSL customers like they are doing them a favor just by offering any service. All the best deals go to their fiber customers.

AT&T Randall Stephenson is a recent convert to the “who cares about video customers” movement. Services like DirecTV Now were originally channel-rich bargains, but now they are a place for rate hikes and channel deletions. Over a half-million streaming customers have already canceled after the most recent price hikes, but Stephenson claims he does not mind, because those bargain-chasers are low-quality customers worthy of purging. AT&T’s dream customer is one who appreciates whatever AT&T gives them and does not mind a parade of rate hikes.

Comcast’s chief financial officer Mike Cavanagh said it more succinctly: seeking subscribers that “really value video and our bundle despite the increases in prices,” and has “the wallet for a fuller video experience.”

Customers who decide to take their business to a streaming competitor are already learning the industry still has the last laugh. As package prices head north of $50/month, that is not too far off from the pricing offered by cable and phone companies for base video packages. In fact, Spectrum has begun undercutting most streaming providers, offering $15-25 packages of local and/or popular cable channels with a Cloud DVR option for around $5 more a month.

For two months, Hagerstown, Md.-based Antietam Broadband, an independent cable company serving Washington County, has been facing an organized effort to bring its broadband business to its knees.

A series of prolonged service outages that the cable company characterized as a “multi-pronged concerted attack” affected both internet and voice service for 40-50% of its customers. A “malicious and targeted attack outside of our network” caused connections to slow, and in many cases stop, the company admitted. The attack flooded the company’s service delivery network with “more than one million malicious hits against our network every 5 minutes,” according to Antietam Broadband president Brian Lynch.

As a result, some customers have been without stable service for over a week at a time, and with the attacks continuing for at least two months, many are growing increasingly frustrated by the repeated outages.

“It has come on for an hour and then gone down again,” said Barbara Ewald of Hagerstown, telling the Herald-Media it was her 11th day of problems with her internet service. “I can’t keep crawling around to reset it. I’m not going to try to set it. It’s not my responsibility. We deserve better than this.”

Other customers have experienced outages up to a dozen times a day, depending on how sustained the attacks are on Antietam’s network.

Letter from Brian Lynch, President of Antietam Broadband.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lynch said. “There’s an entity trying to interrupt communication. The way they’re doing it is very unique; it’s multi-pronged.”

Evidently not a traditional denial-of-service-disruption, Lynch won’t go into much detail about the exact nature of the attack, except to say it targets the company’s cable modems which manage voice and data service.

A recent public meeting at the Washington County Free Library attracted at least 80 local residents to complain about the state of Antietam’s service.

Penny Wolters of Hagerstown told the audience her son was unable to complete a college assignment in time and some of her bills were paid late because of the ongoing service disruptions. Other subscribers who telecommute or operate in-home businesses had to leave Antietam’s service area to find a reliable connection. Calls to customer service were met “with rudeness” according to several complaining customers. A representative told one customer she should be grateful the company offered her any service credit for an outage that had been a problem for over six weeks.

Even with the help of Cable Labs, CommScope/ARRIS and Zcorum, and security experts from around the country, the attacks continued, although they seem to be ebbing. But after two months dealing with the problem, a local grassroots group, “More Cable Options for Hagerstown” launched to find alternatives for Antietam.

“My goal is to give the citizens of Washington County a platform to discuss their frustration with Antietam Broadband,” organizer Cherish Marriott told the newspaper. “I’d also like to give them the tools and information on how to bring other service providers to the area.”

For Lynch, the priority has become repairing the damage to the company’s reputation.

“We want to personally apologize to our customers for the disruption and frustration these past weeks have caused in your life,” Lynch wrote on the company’s Facebook page. “We recognize the internet and phone services we provide are of the utmost importance to you. We would like to thank you for the support and patience you have shown us during this challenging time.”

WDVM in Hagerstown reports on the service outage issues that began in April. Hagerstown’s mayor wonders why the city apologized for the cable company’s problems. (1:31)

To address customer concerns, Antietam provided this recent update to customers:

• “We have gone two weeks since the last event. We believe that the measures we’ve taken have been effective, and we are closely watching our network in case the attackers try again.”
• “We are increasing the credit to residential customers from two to three weeks. Credits will be automatically placed on your bill. If you previously received two weeks of credit, on your next bill you will see the additional week of credit. These additional credits will include leased modems and/or routers provided by Antietam.”
• “We have seen no evidence that the attackers had access to any customer data stored on our systems.”
• “We will continue to stress test our networks to provide every safeguard available against further cyberattacks.”

Local organizers meet to discuss ongoing problems with Antietam Broadband and what alternatives exist. WDVM reports. (2:00)

Frontier Communications will pay one smartphone addict $1,000 if they will give up their device for one week and rely on a 1990s-era obsolete flip phone instead. The cringe worthy challenge, soaked in irony, is brought to you by a phone company that delivers late 1990s-era DSL to a substantial number of its customers.

Frontier:

If you’re chosen, you’ll be responsible for using a flip phone in place of your smartphone for seven full days (that’s 168 hours!), and we want you to log your experience. We’ll have you track (don’t worry, your info stays safe with us!) how long it takes you to do basic tasks such as texting and checking email, how many times you wish you could Google something, how many hours you slept, how your productivity changed (or didn’t!), and even if you were late to appointments (after all, how does anyone get around without Google Maps?). Was your experience #TheWorstThingEver? Did you find new freedom? Either way, we want to hear about it.

Applicants can register until July 8, 2019. 

What’s in it for you

$1,000 in compensation

Boredom Buster Swag Bag (i.e. your survival kit) including:

• An actual, physical map (yes, those still exist!) to make up for your GPS.
• A pocket phonebook, because who memorizes numbers anymore?
• A notepad and pen to make grocery trips a little less painful.
• A couple ’90s CDs (think Britney and NSYNC) to soothe your Spotify withdrawals.
• Remote work environment as you earn your $1,000—no heading to an office at 8am for this job!
• No drug testing or background check required.
• A unique social experiment and a chance to go back in time . . . or, well, something like that.

The goal of the experiment is “to help us understand how much we rely on smartphones and how that affects day-to-day life. (Our hypothesis? A lot.)”

It is too bad Frontier didn’t embark on an experiment to determine how much customers rely on high quality, 21st century internet access. They could quickly learn that for many of those stuck with Frontier’s DSL service… they can’t, because Frontier does not provide it.

AT&T is offering a permanent way out of its 1 TB data cap.

Customers who buy and activate two AT&T Smart Wi-Fi Extenders ($99.98 for two) by June 30, 2019 can get a permanent bill credit worth $30 a month for ongoing unlimited internet access as long as their internet account remains active and in good standing.

Here is how:

• New or existing residential AT&T Internet customers who buy and activate two (2) AT&T Wi-Fi Extenders will receive a $30 bill credit for unlimited internet data allowance plan.
• You must have a Pace 5268, NVG599, or BGW210 gateway. Existing AT&T Internet customers without compatible gateways will need to first be upgraded to a compatible gateway.
• Offer does not apply to DSL or fixed wireless customers.
• Credit starts within 3 bills.
• Internet service account must be active and in good standing for continued receipt of bill credits.
• Offer available with internet plans 768 kbps–1,000 Mbps.
• Employees and retirees not eligible.

Sales tax applies, but AT&T is offering free ground shipping. The fine print:

A stray bullet that hit a fiber optic line in late May eventually disrupted Altice/Suddenlink service in eastern North Carolina and caused a minor outage for the Beaufort County 911 Communication Center.

The bullet, recovered by the Washington, N.C. Police Department, damaged the overhead fiber optic line it struck, eventually bringing service down for nearly a day.

Suddenlink first detected the problem on a Saturday in late May, but did not identify the fiber line as “shot” until a day later, at which point WPD officers responded to the scene. The cable company evidently did not start repairs until after a widespread service outage began.

Most of the information about the outage was provided by the local police department, because Suddenlink has not responded to requests for details about the outage’s extent or duration. A police report about the incident shows that there were no calls to 911 to report the shooting, and a suspect has not been identified. The WPD classified the incident as “damage to property.”

The Washington Daily News reports that there was some disruption to the city’s public safety operations.

“911 operations are impacted by any interruption in internet service, but we can operate without it for a short period of time,” Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Charlie Rose told the newspaper. “We may receive notice if there is a planned outage for maintenance. Our service has been slow today, but hasn’t been out completely.”