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Comcast and Verizon are attempting a virtual merger, meaning that both sides are agreeing to work together by staying out of each other’s way, Peter Kafka reports on the Wall Street Journal’s digits.  (3 minutes)

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSJ Verizons 3-6 Billion Spectrum Deal Turns Heat on ATT 12-2-11.flv[/flv]

And what of AT&T?  The Wall Street Journal reports Verizon Wireless’ deal is ramping up pressure on rival AT&T, which is fighting to salvage its deal to take over T-Mobile USA, Greg Bensinger reports.  (5 minutes)

(Courtesy: The Consumerist)

An Atlanta grandmother got the shock of her life when she called Comcast to activate her new cable box.  When she called the number Comcast printed on her equipment receipt, she reached an adult sex chat line instead.

“I really got upset, extremely upset. I just like hung up the phone and I had to call my husband in to call again because I thought maybe I’d made a mistake,” Dora Nopple told an Atlanta TV station. “I just couldn’t believe that a company as large as Comcast is not aware of what they’re putting on receipts for their customers to call.”

Sure enough, when a reporter from WAGA-TV dialed the number on the bottom of her receipt, a porn line answered the call.

A Comcast spokesperson immediately apologized.

“Comcast sincerely apologizes to our customer who called the number typed on their receipt and was unexpectedly connected to an adult phone service,” the Comcast statement reads. “This was simply a human error resulting from a temporary employee who inadvertently typed an 800 number prefix for what should have been an 888 prefix.”

Comcast believes the error was a one-time event, limited to that single customer.  Perhaps, but Comcast’s past track record has exposed other customers to heavy breathing sex operators. In October 2009, Comcast mailed thousands of postcards to Harrisburg, Penn. customers advertising an upgrade of HBO On Demand.  But when callers dialed the 800 number to order the new HD channel, they ended up on a phone sex hotline instead.

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WAGA in Atlanta spoke with Dora Nopple about her unwelcome phone call to Comcast customer service to activate her new cable box.  She reached an adult porn line instead.  (2 minutes)

Mediacom is announcing broad price increases for many of its customers scheduled to take effect on Dec. 15.  Most cable-TV subscribers will pay $2-3 more a month for basic cable, an additional $2 a month for Cinemax and Showtime, and $2 extra a month for “Digital Plus” cable service.  To add insult, the paperless bill credit that used to knock $1 off your bill if you chose not to receive a mailed billing statement is also being eliminated.

Lee Grassley, Mediacom’s chief lobbyist, delivered the company line about the rate increase in letters mailed to subscribers.  In essence, he blamed everyone but Mediacom for the rate hikes, and in poetic language one normally doesn’t get from a cable company rate increase notification:

As our nation struggles to pull itself out of what has been called the Great Recession, we recognize that these are challenging times for the hardworking men and women living in the communities that we serve.

[…] Over the past few years, many broadcasters have used their monopoly powers to demand 100%, 200% and even 300% rate increases during contract negotiations.  This has driven up cable and satellite rates and forced American consumers to pay billions of dollars for “free” over-the-air television.

The problems with sports programming are equally alarming.  One look at the skyrocketing rights fees announced with recent deals and it is easy to see that the marketplace for live televised sports is out of control.

[…] Contrary to public perception, cable companies are reluctant to raise video prices because when we do, we lose subscribers.  Mediacom does not make money when we raise video rates, since we remit virtually every penny of the increase on to programmers.  In fact, over the last three years, our programming cost increases were more than double our video revenue increases.

Since the programming community has been unwilling to exercise even the slightest measure of self-restraint when it comes to reigning in their spending or increasing their price demands, Mediacom has taken the fight to Washington.

Mediacom as new-found-friend fighting for lower cable rates comes across as ironic, at best, to Stop the Cap! reader Noel, who lives in Mediacom’s Iowa footprint.

“This is the same cable company who pocketed rate increases annually for as long as I’ve been a subscriber, and if they can’t raise the price of the television service, they’ll just make it up on the broadband side,” Noel writes.  “They have their nerve complaining about monopolies.”

Noel points out the local station retransmission consent fees are a more recent phenomenon, and Mediacom rate increases in prior years were the same or higher.

“I think they are realizing there is an absolute maximum people in Iowa can afford for cable, and years of rate increases have allowed all of the players to assume they can slice a bigger piece from that pie for themselves, and we’re tapped out,” Noel adds.

Noel called Mediacom and threatened to cancel service and received a nice consolation price: customer retention pricing normally reserved for new customers.

“I have a year reprieve, but rest assured I will start dropping things after the deal expires at these prices.”

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KCCI in Des Moines covers Mediacom’s rate increases and the reaction from local residents who will have to pay more for cable service.  (2 minutes)

A Little Rock hairdresser’s electronic shrine to the rock group KISS has led to a standoff with Verizon Wireless, who claims the device is jamming their wireless signal.

Stacie “Mack” McIntosh received the pinball machine-sized “shrine,” complete with miniatures of group members and a working light show, as a gift from fellow KISS devotees.  When she plugs it in and turns it on, Verizon Wireless’ signal degrades in the immediate area — a victim of some unknown interference the wireless company attributes to the device.  Now the cell phone company is demanding McIntosh get rid of the shrine, or at least leave it unplugged, and McIntosh has refused.

“What can they do to me? This is my salon,” she told local TV station KLRT. “I pay the bills.”

For now, the KISS show must go on, and visitors who shop in and around McIntosh’s salon have to endure one signal bar (or less) of reception.

But the problem may soon turn up elsewhere in Arkansas and beyond.  The company that manufactured the original KISS shrine, Weird Art Productions, is busily creating more shrines that could lead to more interference problems.

Verizon says interference to their cell phone network isn’t limited to music group shrines.  Malfunctioning transmitters, electronic light signs, wireless devices at drive-thru restaurants, and souped up CB radios can all cause problems on certain frequency bands, some licensed specifically to Verizon Wireless.

For now, it’s unlikely the Federal Communications Commission will actively get involved in McIntosh’s dispute, considering the interference is highly-localized around McIntosh’s salon.  But Verizon may be within its rights to insist interference problems be mitigated, especially if the KISS shrine concept goes viral.  That may eventually ensnare the manufacturer — Weird Art Productions — in what the FCC calls a “Notice of Apparent Liability,” legal jargon for its version of an indictment, sometimes followed by a substantial fine.

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KLRT in Little Rock visits the scene of the wireless ‘crime’ — Stacie McIntosh’s KISS shrine, ensconced in her salon and ready for the next performance… for now.  (4 minutes)

FairPoint Communications is under fire for counting customers “broadband ready” when, in fact, they can’t buy DSL service from the northern New England phone company at any price.

One of the commitments FairPoint made to regulators who approved their buyout of Verizon landlines in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont in 2007 was that the company would expand broadband availability to at least 87 percent of residents in states like Maine.  In October, FairPoint claimed it had met that target, but now the Office of the Public Advocate has found instances where the phone company counted customers who live too far away from the phone company’s facilities to buy the service as “served.”

FairPoint is apparently counting most customers within a DSL-equipped exchange as reachable by broadband, even if only some of them actually are.  The rest either live too far away to get proper broadband speeds, or are connected to inferior lines that will not sustain a serviceable connection.

Maine’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) is upset FairPoint seems to be padding the numbers in its favor.  Maine’s Public Broadcasting Network talked with commissioners:

“I just find it hard to reconcile that it’s in the public interest to include in the definition of addressable lines, a line on which no customer can be connected and to which Fairpoint has made no planning or economic commitment to serve in the future,” said Vendean Vafiades. She, along with fellow commissioner David Littell, voted in favor of a decision which is likely to require Fairpoint to re-calculate the 87 percent figure using a stricter methodology.

“And I do believe that Fairpoint has a commitment to be economically viable in this state and to provide good quality service. And at a minimum I think Fairpoint should be required to provide actual access to meet its merger condition and obligations,” said Vafiades.

The holdout vote was that of PUC Chairman Tom Welch, who sympathized with Fairpoint on this issue.

The vote in Maine is likely to force FairPoint, which had hoped it was “all done” fulfilling broadband obligations, to spend more to upgrade its network to sufficiently service customers it promised it would.

FairPoint defends their interpretation of the numbers, noting the company has spent more than $169 million across their northern New England territories on broadband, making good on their commitment.  The state’s consumer advocate and PUC disagree, so now all parties will be re-evaluating their numbers, and FairPoint customers still waiting for DSL might still have a chance to get it after all.

Maine’s Public Broadcasting Network reports on the controversy over FairPoint’s promise to serve at least 87% of Maine with broadband service. Maine’s public utility commissioners voted to ramp up the pressure on Fairpoint Communications with regard to their broadband rollout. The expansion of high-speed internet to most areas of Maine was one of the conditions of Fairpoint’s purchase of Verizon’s former landline operation in 2007. (3 minutes)
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