Oceanic Time Warner Cable is now providing free Wi-Fi access for Standard Internet (or above) broadband customers on the island of Oahu.

“Increasingly, our Hawaii customers want to take their high-speed Internet with them out of the home and on-the-go,” said Oceanic president Bob Barlow. “The TWC Wi-Fi network we’re building for Hawaii will allow our customers to greatly maximize their TWC Internet subscription – at no additional charge.”

The company has launched the service on the island with more than 400 Ruckus Wireless-branded hotspots in areas like Sunset Beach, Stan Sheriff, and the Kailua District Park. The hotspots can be identified by their network name: TWCWiFi. Customers can get access by logging in with their Oceanic/Time Warner Cable MyServices account name and password. Guest users can buy a “pay as you go” TWC Access Pass starting at $2.95 an hour.

TWC’s Wi-Fi network is now focused on Honolulu, but customers in most major communities on the island will also find limited service.

Time Warner is gradually expanding its Wi-Fi services in high traffic areas and where it faces competition from Google Fiber. TWC Wi-Fi is available from 1,000 access points in Manhattan and more than 12,000 hotspots in Los Angeles. Wi-Fi service was also introduced in downtown Charlotte, N.C., Kansas City and Austin.

Incoming Rogers CEO Guy Laurence has a reputation for hating cubicles, desks, meetings, and paper. How many Rogers’ employees will be left to enjoy the changes is unknown.

Rogers Communications has tapped Guy Laurence, the head of one of Great Britain’s largest cell phone operators to lead eastern Canada’s biggest cable and wireless firm after current CEO Nadir Mohamed retires in early December.

The company has spent months on a global search to find its next chief executive and signaled how important its wireless business is by selecting the current CEO of Vodafone UK to run the business.

Shareholders barely registered this morning’s announcement, with little movement in the stock, but analysts at some of Wall Street’s largest investment banks think the choice will help Rogers better position itself against increasing competition from Bell/BCE and Telus, which have stolen away some of Rogers’ cable and wireless customers.

“Its unique mix of wireless, cable and media assets offer a brilliant platform to provide innovative service to Canadians. I intend to build on the strong foundation established under Nadir’s leadership to compete and win in the market,” Laurence said in the statement.

When Laurence relocates to Rogers’ headquarters in Toronto, he will be immediately confronted with a Conservative government that has made wireless competition a hallmark of its political platform. In January, Rogers will be a participant in federal spectrum actions for coveted new 700MHz frequencies that Rogers wants to expand its cellular network. Ottawa wants some of those frequencies to be set aside for new competitors to bolster wireless competition. Rogers, along with the other large incumbents, wants access to bid on all available spectrum.

The company has struggled with declining market share as a growing number of customers finishing their wireless contracts have taken the opportunity to change providers, mostly to Bell and Telus’ benefit.

Rogers Cable has also suffered subscriber losses in Ontario from increasing competition from Bell’s IPTV service Fibe, which continues to run aggressive new customer promotions.

Rogers may be hoping for an image reset in Canada, and Laurence’s unconventional way of doing business may help.

“I don’t believe in offices. They’re a thing of the past. Offices produce things like a conventional company,” Laurence told a British newspaper in 2011.

To underline his point, Laurence abolished offices and personal desks for Vodafone employees and underlined the new policy by ordering cleaning staff to incinerate any items left on desks overnight. Vodafone workers are given a laptop, a Vodafone mobile phone and an employee locker. Where they choose to conduct business is up to them. Meetings are heavily frowned upon.

The incoming Rogers CEO also despises paper, and wants employees to use as little of it as possible.  At Vodafone, workers often had to buy paper themselves for use in the office and hide it from view.

Rogers’ dress code may also radically change. At Vodafone, Laurence insisted employees dress the same way customers do.

“When you remove the barriers of offices, meetings and all the rest of it, people can spend more time doing what they’re supposed to do,” Laurence said. “As a consequence, people start to perform better. It used to take us 90 days to do a pricing change. We do that in four days now.”

Analysts suspect fixing Rogers’ lousy reputation for customer service will be one of his top priorities. Rogers’ executives will also be updating their resumes — Laurence has a reputation for shaking up middle and upper management. But one priority Rogers’ investors expect will not change: protecting the company’s high profit margins and continued efforts to cut costs.

Laurence did not forget everything he learned while getting his MBA. After joining Vodafone, he initiated a brutal workforce reduction that separated 2,350 Vodafone employees from their desks and lockers – permanently, slashing the payroll from 9,500 to 7,150 workers.

Verizon Communications notified the New York Public Service Commission late Tuesday it was abandoning a request to replace damaged landlines anywhere in the state where the company’s facilities were substantially destroyed with a wireless service called Voice Link.

Verizon’s original tariff, if approved, would have allowed the company to drop landline service in areas of New York where it decided it was impractical to repair or replace heavily damaged wired infrastructure. Customers in these areas would no longer be able to obtain wired landline service or DSL broadband. Instead, under the original tariff request, Verizon would offer customers Voice Link as its sole service offering, providing voice-only service over existing telephones, assuming a good signal was available from a nearby Verizon Wireless cell tower.

Yesterday, Stop the Cap! reported a well-placed source in Albany indicated Verizon was unlikely to win approval of its tariff request after a summer of real-world experiences with Voice Link service on Fire Island. Customers overwhelmingly rejected the service, complaining about dropped and missed calls, poor voice quality, and the lack of an affordable broadband option. Yesterday, Verizon separately announced it was reversing an earlier decision and would now install its fiber network FiOS on Fire Island, offering customers the option of keeping Voice Link or switching to FiOS for telephone and/or broadband service.

Accordingly, Verizon today requested the PSC abandon proceedings regarding its request, calling the issue “moot,” and for now will no longer pursue an effort to drop landline service in New York. Verizon will continue to offer Voice Link in the state as an optional service, but will also provide traditional landline and DSL service (where available).

Verizon has not said whether it will continue to pursue regulators for permission to supply Voice Link as its sole service offering in part of New Jersey and Pennsylvania where the company’s landline networks were damaged by last year’s Hurricane Sandy.

Verizon FiOS is coming to Fire Island.

Verizon Communications has thrown in the beach towel attempting to convince residents of popular tourist destination Fire Island to accept its wireless landline replacement Voice Link as the company’s sole landline service option.

After telling customers for months it did not make financial sense to restore copper service or bring its fiber optic network FiOS to Fire Island, Verizon senior vice president of national operations support Tom Maguire today reversed course.

“In today’s competitive marketplace it’s all about making sure you can take care of customers because if you don’t they can go someplace else,” Maguire told Newsday. “Interestingly on Fire Island, there is no place else, so we listened to our customers. It was pretty apparent that we wanted to do something beyond Voice Link and the wireless network, so we think that fiber is the best course.”

Verizon customers on Fire Island have told Stop the Cap! all summer they felt abandoned by Verizon, stuck using a wireless landline replacement service they claimed worked poorly or not at all at times. Customers also loudly complained that Verizon was effectively forcing broadband customers who depended on Verizon DSL to the much more expensive Verizon Wireless broadband service with a very small usage cap. Many attended meetings sponsored by elected officials or the Public Service Commission to decry Voice Link and demand Verizon offer the same quality service its landline network used to provide.

Maguire told the newspaper the company will now deploy its fiber network FiOS on Fire Island, offering residents new options for telephone and broadband service. The 600 customers on Fire Island with Voice Link will be able to keep the wireless service or switch to FiOS fiber.

Reached for comment, Verizon tells Stop the Cap! its fiber service will not include FiOS TV because Verizon does not have franchise agreements with the many municipalities on Fire Island, and their primary concern is getting the fiber network engineered and constructed.

Schumer

Fire Island residents have made it clear to Verizon their biggest concern is Internet access, not television, and Verizon FiOS will be able to deliver faster Internet speeds unavailable from DSL.

Verizon expects to begin construction in October, although it has already started preliminary design work for the new fiber network. Verizon expects to have the fiber build complete by the beginning of the 2014 summer season on the island.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been carefully monitoring the Voice Link issue, released a statement welcoming Verizon’s decision.

“By installing fiber-optic cables on the island, Verizon will not only make the system as good as it was before, it will be making it better,” said Schumer. “Fire Island residents will now have greater access to high-speed Internet – a necessity in the modern age – and reliable voice service. Verizon deserves credit for listening to our concerns and changing course.”

In a June guest article written for publication on Stop the Cap!, Maguire wrote it would cost Verizon from $4.8 million to more than $6 million to restore landline service. Maguire argued it made no economic sense to commit to a multimillion dollar investment with no guarantee that residents of the island will sign up for Verizon service.

“That’s probably why Verizon is the sole provider on the island,” Maguire noted in the piece. “None of the companies we compete with in other parts of New York offer services on the island.”

Today’s decision represents a complete reversal of the company’s earlier views, but one that is welcomed nonetheless by residents on Fire Island reached by Stop the Cap! this afternoon.

“We’re very glad this is now over and behind us,” said Verizon customer Shari who has toughed out the summer with cellphone-only service.

“I can’t wait to return Voice Link, which has been a real pain,” said Thom.

Both customers tell Stop the Cap! they intend to sign up for Verizon FiOS the moment it becomes available.

Verizon Voice Link – Not good enough for New York, says our source.

A well-placed source in Albany tells Stop the Cap! Verizon’s Voice Link, a wireless landline replacement,  is unlikely to be approved as a sole landline offering in New York State.

“With mounting evidence supplied by Verizon itself in response to staff requests and increasing pressure from local, state, and federal politicians hearing the concerns of more than 500 New York residents that have opposed Verizon’s proposal or who have complained about the quality of service provided by Voice Link over the summer, it is increasingly clear the service in its current form will fail to meet the Public Service Commission’s standard for basic voice service,” the well-informed source tells Stop the Cap!

“It is important to recognize that the PSC’s primary concern is providing an equivalent voice service that has the reliability required to reach emergency personnel and deliver ancillary services the disabled community depends on,” said the source. “While the Commission is unlikely to reject Verizon Voice Link as an alternative, optional service, the Commission cannot and signaled to our office it will not ignore the consensus from real Voice Link users complaining the service is not well received and reliability issues have persisted all summer.”

Verizon has attempted to place Voice Link in the homes of residents on the western half of Fire Island as its sole service offering for landline service, while in other communities upstate the company claims it offers Voice Link as an optional service for customers with line problems or for those requesting seasonal telephone service.

The source tells us the sticking point for regulators is Verizon’s request to offer Voice Link as its sole service offering, denying requests to repair existing landline service, as has been the case on the western half of Fire Island since Superstorm Sandy damaged much of the infrastructure on that half of the island almost one year ago.

Verizon officials claim the costs to re-establish wireline copper phone service on the island do not make financial sense based on the small number of customers served, and the company adds there is no business case for upgrading to fiber service either. But residents and some local officials claim Verizon has exaggerated the amount of damage, and many customers in the affected area still have intermittent service, but cannot get Verizon repair crews to repair trouble on partly functional lines.

The PSC has received more 650 comments to date about Verizon Voice Link — all negative — and has also heard from New York politicians who are strongly opposed to Verizon’s efforts to curtail landline service in the state. Our source tells us some of those politicians were moved by constituents who placed calls over Voice Link to officials in Albany and Washington to let them to hear the actual voice quality of the service. The source tells us the quality of those calls were often plagued with audio anomalies and breakups.

Last week, the Commission requested Verizon send a functional Voice Link unit for internal testing, but that request may now be a formality, according to our source.

“I think the decision is mostly made at this point,” said the source. “It is pretty clear the PSC is signaling to complaining politicians and through its repeated requests for information from Verizon it is unconvinced by Verizon’s arguments that claim there is a necessity to replace landline service with wireless Voice Link, and the company also did itself no favors when its executives previewed plans to abandon landline service in favor of wireless in unprofitable areas even before Sandy struck,” the source tells us. “Verizon isn’t stupid, so it is likely the company will offer something different before their request is turned down.”

Verizon said this afternoon it had no comment on Stop the Cap!’s report.