Detroit U-verse technicians are at high risk of being confronted by crooks looking for valuable electronics.

AT&T U-verse technicians carry iPads, cell phones, and other expensive electronic equipment in trucks destined for service calls, and the crooks know it.

At least 10 technicians have been robbed in northwest Detroit in the last week alone, some at gunpoint.

“They’re scared. Afraid to go in certain areas,” said CWA Union President Greg Streeby. “A tech was approached by an individual with a gun who said, ‘Give me your iPad.’

So far, union leaders have been unimpressed with the reaction of AT&T, leading one worker to suggest the company does not care if technicians live or die.

Thieves learned AT&T’s U-verse branded trucks come stocked with expensive electronics, including cell phones and iPads, and they have become magnets for smash and grab robberies while technicians are inside customer homes. Since the robberies began, some technicians have started bringing valuable equipment inside with them.

Thieves learned to adapt, and are now willing to confront technicians as they return to their trucks, sometimes at gunpoint, and order them to hand over the electronics. Technicians have lost phones, laptops, tablets, and whatever else the thieves can steal and resell.

Jim Simons has never seen anything like it, and he has been working for AT&T as a field technician for more than 20 years.

“We are defenseless. We don’t carry any weapons,” Simons told WDIV News. “Not allowed to.”

AT&T workers were told by administrators there is nothing the company can do about the robberies, at which point a group of workers left and began a union-backed protest outside of several AT&T facilities across Detroit.

AT&T promptly locked out those workers and deactivated their ID badges, and their vehicles remain locked and inaccessible inside AT&T gated parking lots.

The company claims it is working on a solution, but union officials want an extra service technician temporarily sent on service calls in dangerous areas to keep an eye on the company’s property while another worker attends to the customer. AT&T has rejected that proposal.

[flv width=”625″ height=”372″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDIV Detroit ATT service workers robbed in northwest Detroit neighborhood 6-29-12.flv[/flv]

WDIV first told its Detroit audience about the AT&T holdups last Friday in this exclusive report. (2 minutes)

[flv width=”625″ height=”372″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDIV Detroit ATT techs protesting over on-the-job security concerns 7-2-12.flv[/flv]

Since WDIV’s first report, safety conditions have further deteriorated for AT&T workers, some of whom have now begun public protests outside of AT&T facilities demanding more safety while on service calls. (2 minutes)

Sally Medina is a Sacramento mom grandfathered with her daughter on an unlimited data plan, or so she thought.

When daughter Leticia started getting text messages from Verizon alerting her she used half of her data allowance for the month, the Medina family learned for the first time Verizon had quietly switched them away from their unlimited data plan to one with just a 2GB usage allowance.

The family suspects the change was made when Leticia upgraded to a new phone back in January, and did not realize it until slowly growing data use finally triggered the first usage alert from Verizon.

Medina is angry because Verizon pulled the rug out from their agreement to allow the family to keep unlimited data.

“This was the agreement. We did our part. I think they should follow through on theirs,” Medina told CBS Sacramento consumer reporter Kurtis Ming. “They told her it was going to be unlimited so she didn’t question it.”

Too late to fix it now, came the reply from Verizon Wireless, who refused to switch the family back to unlimited data.

“Selling data consumption is incredibly lucrative, especially since data consumption is expected to rise. People are getting more hungry for it. And also people will start using more data as the network speeds improve,” CNET senior editor Jessica Dolcourt told the consumer reporter.

Dolcourt added carriers have a vested interest kicking customers off unlimited data as quickly as possible so they can start earning the additional revenue that comes with more expensive tiered data plans.

Verizon today launched its biggest change yet with its new “Share Everything” plan. Consumer groups like Free Press agree it does represent a big change. Verizon used to charge $29.99 a month for unlimited data. As of today, it charges $50 for 1GB on its newest plan.

The company says existing customers grandfathered on unlimited data plans can keep them, but only if they do not upgrade their phones or are willing to pay the unsubsidized upgrade price, which can run as high as $600. Either way, Verizon Wireless will get paid.

In light of the media attention on the company, the Medina family ultimately won what they wanted — an apology from Verizon and a return to unlimited data for daughter Leticia. But even she will not escape choosing a different plan if she wants a discounted phone in the future.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KOVR Sacramento Verizon Sneaks Away Unlimited Data 6-27-12.mp4[/flv]

KOVR in Sacramento reports Verizon Wireless snuck away an unlimited data plan that one local customer was promised she could keep.  (2 minutes)

Comcast is running “welcome back” ads in Chattanooga that still claim they run America’s fastest ISP, when they don’t.

EPB, Chattanooga’s publicly-owned utility that operates the nation’s fastest gigabit broadband network, has already won the speed war, delivering consistently faster broadband service than any of its Tennessee competitors. So when facts are not on their side, competitors like Comcast and a conservative “watchdog” group simply make them up as they go along.

Comcast is running tear-jerker ads in Chattanooga featuring professional actors pretending to be ex-customers looking to own up to their “mistake” of turning their back on Comcast’s 250GB usage cap (now temporarily paroled), high prices, and questionable service.

“It turns out that the speeds I was looking for, Xfinity Internet had all along,” says the actor, before hugging an “Xfinity service technician” in the pouring rain. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

The ad closes repeating the demonstrably false claim Comcast operates “the nation’s fastest Internet Service Provider.”

“I see those commercials on television and I’m thinking, I wonder how much did they pay you to say that,” says an actual EPB customer in a response ad from the public utility.

It turns out quite a lot. The high-priced campaign is just the latest work from professional advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco, which is quite a distance from Tennessee. Goodby has produced Comcast ads for years. The ad campaign also targets the cable company’s other rival that consistently beats its broadband speeds — Verizon FiOS.

EPB provides municipal power, broadband, television, and telephone service for residents in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Comcast tried to ram their “welcome back” message home further in a newspaper interview with the Times Free Press, claiming “a lot of customers are coming back to Xfinity” because Comcast has a larger OnDemand library, “integrated applications and greater array of choices.”

Comcast does not provide any statistics or evidence to back up its claims, but EPB president and CEO Harold DePriest has already seen enough deception from the cable company to call the latest claims “totally false.”

In fact, DePriest notes, customers come and go from EPB just as they do with Comcast. The real story, in his view, is how many more customers arrive at EPB’s door than leave, and DePriest says they are keeping more customers than they lose.

EPB fully launched in Chattanooga in 2010, and despite Comcast and AT&T’s best customer retention efforts, EPB has signed up 37,000 customers so far, with about 20 new ones arriving every day. (Comcast still has more than 100,000 customers in the area.)

Many come for the EPB’s far superior broadband speeds, made possible on the utility’s fiber to the home network. EPB also does not use Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, which Charter, AT&T, and Comcast have all adopted to varying degrees. Although the utility avoids cut-rate promotional offers that its competitors hand out to new customers (EPB needs to responsibly pay off its fiber network’s construction costs), its pricing is lower than what the cable and phone companies offer at their usual prices.

Comcast claims customers really don’t need super high speed Internet service, underlined by the fact they don’t offer it. But some businesses (including home-based entrepreneurs) do care about the fact they can grow their broadband speeds as needed with EPB’s fiber network. Large business clients receiving quotes from EPB are often shocked by how much lower the utility charges for service that AT&T and Comcast price much higher. It costs EPB next to nothing to offer higher speeds on its fiber network, designed to accommodate the speed needs of customers today and tomorrow.

The competition is less able. AT&T cannot compete on its U-verse platform, which tops out shy of 30Mbps. Comcast has to move most of its analog TV channels to digital, inconveniencing customers with extra-cost set top boxes to boost speeds further.

The fact EPB built Chattanooga’s best network, designed for the present and future, seems to bother some conservative “watchdog” groups. The Beacon Center of Tennesee, a group partially funded by conservative activists like Richard Mellon Scaife through a network of umbrella organizations, considers the entire fiber project a giant waste of money. They agree with Comcast, suggesting nobody needs fast broadband speeds:

EPB also offers something called ultra high-speed Internet. Consumers have to pay more than seven times what they would pay for the traditional service — $350 a month. Right now, only residents of a select few cities worldwide (such as Hong Kong) even use this technology, and that is because most consumers will likely not demand it for another 10 years.

Actually, residents in Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea do expect the faster broadband speeds they receive from their broadband providers. Americans have settled for what they can get (and afford). DePriest openly admits he does not expect a lot of his customers to pay $350 a month for any kind of broadband, but the gigabit-capable network proves a point — the faster speeds are available today on EPB at a fraction of price other providers would charge, if they could supply the service at all. Most EPB customers choose lower speed packages that still deliver better performance at a lower price than either Comcast or AT&T offer.

The Beacon Center doesn’t have a lot of facts to help them make their case. But that does not stop them:

• They claim EPB’s network is paid for at taxpayer expense. It is not.
• They quote an “academic study” that claims 75 percent of “government-run” broadband networks lose money, without disclosing the fact the study was bought and paid for by the same industry that wants to keep communities from running broadband networks. Its author, Ron Rizzuto, was inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers in 2004 for service to the cable industry. The study threw in failed Wi-Fi networks built years ago with modern fiber broadband networks to help sour readers on the concept of community broadband.
• Beacon bizarrely claims the fiber network cannot operate without a $300 million Smart Grid. (Did someone inform Verizon of this before they wasted all that money on FiOS? Who knew fiber broadband providers were also in the electricity business?)

The “watchdog” group even claims big, bad EPB is going to drive AT&T, Comcast, and Charter Cable out of business in Chattanooga (apparently they missed those Comcast/Xfinity ads with customers returning to Kabletown in droves):

Fewer and fewer private companies wish to compete against EPB, which will soon have a monopoly in the Chattanooga market, according to private Internet Service Provider David Snyder. “They have built a solution looking for a problem. It makes for great marketing, but there is no demand for this service. By the time service is needed, the private sector will have established this for pennies on the dollar.”

Ironically, Snyder’s claim there is no demand for EPB’s service fall flat when one considers his company, VolState, has been trying to do business with EPB for two years. He needs EPB because he is having trouble affording the “pennies on the dollar” his suppliers are (not) charging.

Snyder tells “Nooganomics” his company wants an interconnection agreement with EPB, because the private companies he is forced to buy service from — including presumably AT&T, want to charge him a wholesale rate twice as much as EPB currently bills consumers. Snyder calls EPB’s competition “disruptive.”

Nooganomics calls EPB’s low priced service a “charity” in comparison to what AT&T and Comcast charge local residents, and the free market can do no wrong-website seems upset consumers are enjoying the benefits of lower priced service, now that the local phone company and cable operator can’t get away with charging their usual high prices any longer.

Deborah Dwyer, an EPB spokeswoman, told the website the company got into the business with state and city approval, followed the rules for obtaining capital and pays the taxes or payments-in-lieu of taxes as the same rate as corporate players. “We believe that public utilities like EPB exist to help improve the quality of life in our community, and the fiber optic network was built to do just that. One of government’s key responsibilities is to provide communities with infrastructure, and fiber to the home is a key infrastructure much like roads, sewer systems and the electric system.”

Snyder can’t dispute EPB delivers great service. He also walks away from the competition-is-good-for-the-free-market rhetoric that should allow the best company with the lowest rates to win, instead declaring customers should only do business with his company to support free market economics (?):

“If you are a free market capitalist and you believe in free markets, you need to do business with VolState,” Mr. Snyder says. “And if you’re highly principled, every time you buy from a government competitor, what you’re voting for with your dollars is, you’re saying, ‘It’s OK for the government come in to private enterprise and start to take over a vast part of what we used to operate in as a free market.’”

Perhaps Snyder and his friends at the Beacon Center have a future in the vinegar business. They certainly have experience with sour grapes.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Ad Welcome Back.flv[/flv]

Comcast’s emotionally charged ad, using paid actors, was produced by advertising firm Goodby Silverstein & Partners. The commercial running in Chattanooga is a slight variation on this one, which targets Verizon FiOS. (1 minute)

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/EPB Ad.flv[/flv]

EPB uses actual customers, not paid actors, in its own advertising that calls out Comcast’s false advertising.  (1 minute)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Reset Your Password.flv[/flv]

Accompanying our earlier piece about the frustration of Internet security, here is a video from the Upright Citizens Brigade that takes password frustration to a whole new level.  (2 minutes)

Smoke signals achieve a faster transmission rate than DSL can manage in the Scottish village of Kettleholm.

The village of Kettleholm, near Lockerbie in Scotland has effectively given up on DSL service from British Telecom and has upgraded the community’s telecommunications service to technologies including smoke signals, messages inserted into bottles and thrown into nearby streams, carrier pigeons, and for urgent communications — the village’s pony express.

All of these communications methods have proven much more effective than the area’s copper wire-based DSL service, which villagers report is often less than useless. In fact, it can take at least 10 minutes to load Google’s home page in Kettleholm on a bad day, and Apple software updates require additional patience — more than 4,525 hours worth (that is more than 188 days) for the latest version of iMovie to arrive.

BT engineers sent to the area to investigate found nothing wrong with the service, which they initially said was operating within normal expectations for DSL “broadband.” But at least 150 local residents strongly disagree, and several made their point producing a video demonstrating how two yogurt cups attached by string provide more reliable communications than BT was managing in their part of Scotland.

The problem, according to local residents, is the decrepit state of the copper-wire based telephone exchange, installed just after World War 2. Broadband advocates say the solution is rubbishing the ancient copper wiring and replacing it with optical fiber that is spreading across the rest of Great Britain. But neither BT or Virgin Media consider Kettleholm worth the investment, placing the village squarely in the undistinguished category of last priority — the one-third of the United Kingdom deemed economically unsuitable for fiber broadband.

UK residents are paying for broadband improvements as part of their TV License Fee, and the government has amassed at least £800 million for upgrades. It irritates some residents that their portion of the license fee is paying for someone else’s broadband upgrades, and salt is rubbed in those wounds when viewers see BT — the largest recipient of government money — spending it on advertisements mailed to Kettleholm residents for services they can never get.

Even worse, the BBC recently learned the phone company isn’t exactly spending every resource on better broadband in the UK. BT recently found £738 million laying around to pay for the rights to Premier League football games for the next three years.

Where there is smoke (signals) there is fire, especially after the BBC picked up the story. BT suddenly had a change of heart about the state of their network in Dumfries and Galloway:

“Kettleholm telephone exchange is a modern digital exchange, System X and offers broadband speeds of up to 8mb/s. We were not initially aware of a problem with broadband in Kettleholm as only a small number of the 120 end users reported problems with their service. The service appears to have gradually degraded over time without triggering any of our alarms. Engineers recently reset equipment in the exchange and tests show that broadband speeds have risen. We will continue to monitor the situation and would like to apologise to everyone for the frustration and inconvenience they have experienced.”

Kettleholm residents appreciate the new attention BT is paying to their network, but the village has been reminding everyone they can find that BT is their sole provider and when they stop paying attention to their DSL facilities, the entire community suffers.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Kettleholm Poor Broadband 6-2012.flv[/flv]

The village of Kettleholm shows off their new telecommunications systems: smoke signals, carrier pigeons, messages inserted into bottles, semaphores, the pony express, and yogurt cups attached by string.  All perform better than BT’s DSL service.  (2 minutes)