Residents in Dixon, Calif. are being inconvenienced by AT&T’s fiber buildout. (Image: KOVR-TV)

AT&T’s contractors turned a Dixon, Calif. neighborhood into “a disaster zone” while attempting to install fiber optic cables for a forthcoming upgrade.

For almost half a year, AT&T’s outsourced construction crews have dug up yards around the growing community of 19,000, located 23 miles from Sacramento. The Valley Glenn neighborhood has seen the worst of it, according to homeowners who complain crews left concrete debris buried in their front yards, killed their lawns, and have been inconvenienced by heavy equipment partially blocking streets for months. Two weeks ago, an AT&T contractor crew hit a gas line, forcing the evacuation of the entire neighborhood.

Homeowner Natalie Avina sought help from Sacramento’s CBS station KOVR-TV, with the hope that drawing media attention to the debacle would force AT&T to ‘do the right thing.’

“They’ve ruined our front yard,” Avina told the station. “Everything’s been dug up. You know we take pride in our homes. You don’t want to come home and see this.”

Heather Craig, another homeowner, reports her lawn is struggling to recover. Then I’ve also learned through experience that having a dependable partner for construction materials ensures everything runs smoothly. We were fortunate to find an excellent provider that met all our needs. Their service area can be found here.

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“They put concrete instead of dirt back underneath our grass, so it’s dying,” Craig said.

Neighbors agree AT&T has been remiss on keeping the neighborhood informed about the duration of the construction and have not given them information about who to contact to discuss damages and concerns.

AT&T responded to the concerns earlier this week.

“As we work to expand and enhance our fiber network to deliver ultra-high speeds to the Dixon area, our goal is to minimize the effect on residents as much as possible,” AT&T said in a statement. “Unfortunately part of this project was not completed to our standards and we are working to fix it.”

Dixon homeowners are demanding AT&T pay for repairs after a contractor damaged lawns and sidewalks during fiber optic infrastructure installation. KOVR in Sacramento reports. (2:14)

AT&T and Comcast have successfully delayed Google Fiber’s expansion around the country long enough to finish upgrades that can nearly match the upstart’s speedy internet service.

Nearly four years after Google Fiber announced it would offer gigabit speed in Nashville, most residents still have no idea when they will be able to have the service installed. Although officially announced in January 2015, Google has only managed to connect 52 apartment buildings and a limited number of single family homes in parts of Charlotte Park, Edgehill, Sylvan Heights, Sylvan Park, East and North Nashville, and Burton Hills. In all, less than 30% of the homes originally promised service actually have it, forcing Google to seek an extension from the Tennessee Public Utilities Board, which was granted last week.

Google’s problems originate within itself and its competitors. The company’s contractors have been criticized for damaging existing wiring, tearing up streets and yards, piercing water pipes causing significant water damage, and inappropriate microtrenching, which caused some of its fiber infrastructure in Nashville to be torn out of the ground by road repair crews.

But the biggest impediment keeping Google from moving faster is its two competitors — AT&T and Comcast, successfully collaborating to stall Google, giving the phone and cable company plenty of time to improve services to better compete. Both companies have also aggressively protected their customers from being poached by offering rock bottom-priced retention plans that some claim are only available in Google Fiber-ready areas.

“It’s still complicated,” Nashville Google Fiber Manager Martha Ivester told the Tennessean newspaper. “Building this fiber optic network throughout the whole city is a long process, and we never expected it wouldn’t be a long process. Obviously, we have had our challenges here.”

WZTV Nashville reports East Nashville residents were upset over road work related to Google Fiber that lasted for months, severely restricting residential parking. (2:37)

Google Fiber Huts – Nashville, Tenn.

Google’s ability to expand has been restrained for years, despite an informal alliance with city officials, primarily over pole attachment issues. Much of middle Tennessee is challenged by a difficult-to-penetrate layer of limestone close to the surface, making underground utility service difficult and expensive. Google’s negotiations with Nashville Electric Service (NES), which owns 80% of the utility poles in Nashville and AT&T, which owns the remaining 20%, have been long and contentious at times. To bring Google Fiber to a neighborhood, existing wires on utility poles have to be moved closer together to make room for Google Fiber. In real terms, that has taken several months, as AT&T and Comcast independently move at their own pace to relocate their respective lines.

An effort to use independent contractors to move all lines in unison — known as “One Touch Make Ready,” was fiercely opposed by AT&T and Comcast, claiming it would violate contracts with existing workers and could pose safety issues, despite the fact both companies use independent contractors themselves to manage wiring. Both companies successfully challenged One Touch Make Ready in court. A federal judge ruled that only the FCC could regulate poles owned by AT&T, while another judge ruled the city had no authority to order the municipally owned electric company to comply with One Touch Make Ready.

In August, the FCC issued an order allowing One Touch Make Ready to apply to AT&T’s poles, but NES still refuses to change its policy of relocating service lines one line at a time. The electric utility did not explain its reasons. AT&T also recently eased its position on One Touch Make Ready, but with NES still stonewalling, Google Fiber’s delays are likely to continue.

AT&T Fiber is being embraced by some customers tired of waiting for Google Fiber.

In the interim, both AT&T and Comcast have upgraded their respective systems. AT&T Fiber offers a fiber-to-the-home connection available in some areas while Comcast offers near-gigabit download speeds over its existing Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) network. The upgrades have taken the wind out of Google Fiber for some tired of waiting.

Google has recently tried to speed progress using underground “shallow trenching” for installation, which buries cable as little as four inches deep. The company has amassed more than 24,000 permits to lay fiber under roads and yards in Nashville, which may speed some deployment, but for some it is too little, too late.

“It has been more than a year since we expected Google Fiber to serve us and they won’t tell us when they will get here, so I gave up and signed a two-year contract for AT&T Fiber service instead,” said Drew Miller. “Google Fiber just isn’t as exciting as it was when it was announced because other providers have similar service now and I get a better deal bundling it with my AT&T cellphone service.”

Attitudes like that obviously concern Google, as have reports that customers in Google Fiber-ready neighborhoods are getting very aggressively priced retention offers if they stay with their current provider.

“Comcast cut my bill from close to $200 to around $125 if I did not switch,” said Stop the Cap! reader Olivia. “I also got double internet speed. I don’t need a gigabit, so I stayed with Comcast. If I get close to their usage limit I will switch to Google then.”

Olivia notes her mother had exactly the same services from Comcast, but Comcast would not offer her the same promotion because she lived in an area not yet wired for Google Fiber.

With upgrades and aggressive customer retentions, the longer Google takes to string fiber, the fewer customers are likely to switch for what was originally “game-changing” internet speeds and service.

WTVF Nashville shows off Google’s microtrenching, burying fiber optic cables just a few inches underground. (2:36)

Pricing Comparisons

Google Fiber

• Fiber 100: $50 a month, internet speeds up to 100 Mbps
• Fiber 1000: $70 a month, internet speeds up to 1,000 Mbps, downloads and uploads
• Fiber 100 + TV: $140 a month, internet speeds up to 100 Mbps, 155+ channels, premium channels (HBO, Showtime) available
• Fiber 1000 + TV: $160 a month, internet speeds up to 1,000 Mbps, 155+ channels, premium channels (HBO, Showtime) available

AT&T

• Internet-only: $50 a month for first 12 months, then $60 thereafter. $99 installation fee. Unlimited data costs an extra $30 a month. Early termination fee: $180 (pro-rated). Speeds range from 10 to 100 Mbps
• Direct TV + Internet: $75/mo first 12 months, then $121. Customers pay a $35 activation fee and $30 a month for unlimited data. 155 channels. Speeds vary. 24 month contract required.
• Internet 1000: $90 a month during first 12 months, then $100/mo thereafter. Bundled discount can reduce cost of package to $80-90. Up to 960 Mbps downloads. Early termination fee: $180 (pro-rated).

Comcast

• Performance Starter: $20 a month, increases to $50 after two-year promotion. Up to 25 Mbps.
• Blast!: $45 a month, increases to $80 a month after two-year promotion. 150 Mbps.
• Gigabit (DOCSIS 3.1): $70 a month, increased to $140 after two-year promotion. 940/35 Mbps.

WSMV Nashville reports Google’s microtrenching has been problematic as road crews unintentionally dig up Google’s optical fiber cables mistakenly buried just two inches underground. (2:44)

Spectrum customers in western New York are reporting overdraft charges and missing funds from their checking accounts that trace back to double-charging by Charter Communications for cable service.

WIVB-TV Buffalo reports Olean resident Michelle La Voie was stunned when an unauthorized debit showed up in her credit union checking account, which appeared to be a double-bill from Spectrum.

The second charge, a duplicate of the $161 payment she made manually, appeared as a “pending charge” on her electronic statement — a charge she did not authorize and a hold on her checking account funds her credit union could not release unless Charter canceled the transaction.

When La Voie called Spectrum’s billing department, she was told it was a computer glitch.

“They informed me that it was a known issue, that payments that had been made on the 19th and the 20th [of August] there was a computer glitch, and there were people being double-charged,” La Voie told WIVB News.

The “glitch” is in fact an “authorization hold” — one that we are experiencing with our August Spectrum bill payment here at Stop the Cap! 

If a customer pays using a debit or credit card, a vendor like Spectrum can place a temporary “hold” on funds. Often, this hold is the full amount of the transaction, which will temporarily make those funds unavailable for withdrawal until either the company and your bank or credit card “settles” the transaction and transfers the funds, or the hold expires, usually after 5-8 days.

In this case, Spectrum or its credit card processor failed to clear the hold after the transaction was settled, meaning affected customers have twice the amount of their cable bill unavailable in their account until the pending charge expires in about a week.

Customers can check to see if this glitch is affecting their account by logging on and looking for something like this:

Pending Charges

Aug 19 2018  TWC * TIME WARNER CABLE   $151.40

Activity Since Last Statement

Aug 28 2018  TWC * TIME WARNER CABLE  $151.40

The presence of both the “pending charge” and the “settled” charge found under current account activity is unusual, because the pending charge should have been canceled at the same time funds were transferred to pay Charter Communications (d/b/a Time Warner Cable). Instead, $151.40 was withdrawn and sent to Charter while an additional $151.40 is remains unavailable for withdrawal because of the authorization hold not being removed. By September 1st, that pending charge will likely expire. But until then, Spectrum has effectively kept $151.40 of your money hostage.

This can become a problem for customers who keep a low balance in their checking account and expect those funds to be immediately available to pay bills or make a cash withdrawal. Because of the extended hold, customers could unintentionally overdraw their checking account, leading to overdraft fees or an automatic draw from a line of credit, if one is attached to your checking account. La Voie had enough money in her account to avoid an overdraft, but she was concerned about those who don’t.

“I asked are you planning to tell customers this so that they can make sure that they are not overdrawn, or having payments declined?  They said no, we don’t have any plans to notify customers,” La Voie said.

In fact, one of her co-workers did incur overdraft fees because of this problem. Her credit union removed the overdraft fees as a courtesy, but not all banks are likely to be that understanding.

Customers can protect themselves by considering using autopay with a credit card, where authorization holds only affect your available credit line, not money in your checking account. For most credit card transactions, the temporary hold has no material impact, and few even notice the hold. But authorization holds can temporarily put a credit card into an overlimit condition if a customer keeps their card nearly “maxed out,” and exceeding your credit limit will damage your credit score and risk your good standing with the credit card issuer.

WIVB in Buffalo reports some customers in western New York are being “double-billed” for Spectrum cable service. (2:06)

With friends like these…

In an effort to attract new business, Frontier Communications has launched a new nationwide brand platform it claims will help customers “facing challenges and frustrations navigating today’s internet services market.”

The “Don’t Go it Alone” campaign advertises Frontier as your friend on the digital frontier.

In one ad, a balladeer laments customers trying to use a home internet connection that is too slow and unreliable to depend on for working from home. The ad shows customers flocking to nearby coffee shops “looking for bandwidth” they do not have at home.

While the ads claim Frontier’s FiOS network is faster than its competitor — Charter Spectrum, many Frontier customers living outside of a FiOS service area will likely find Frontier’s ads ironic. That is because Frontier has a poor track record achieving the promised speeds it advertises to its large base of DSL customers. The 2016 FCC Report, “Measuring Fixed Broadband” (the annual reports were discontinued by the Trump Administration’s FCC in early 2017), found Frontier a poor performer. Even its fiber network Frontier FiOS was measured losing ground in delivering advertised speeds and performance.

Minnesota Public Radio reports hundreds of complaints about Frontier Communications have prompted statewide public hearings about the company’s alleged poor performance. MPR shares the stories of two frustrated Frontier DSL customers paying for service they do not get. (3:28)

“Our internet here is horrible, our provider is Frontier,” Monica King Von Holtum of Worthington in southwest Minnesota, told Minnesota Public Radio. “It’s infuriating.”

Her service is so bad, she can tell if a neighbor starts using the internet or another family member starts browsing.

“If I’m literally the only person using the internet, it’s fine,” said King Von Holtum. “As soon as we have one or more people using different devices it just tanks and we can’t get anything done.”

She is hardly alone. In Minnesota, the Public Utility Commission has received more than 400 complaints and comments about Frontier’s frustrating performance. Customers report service interruptions lasting up to a week and internet speeds slower than dial-up.

One customer said Frontier lacks “common decency” because of the way it treats its customers, often stuck with only one choice for internet access in their rural service areas.

A speed test showing 0.4 Mbps from 2013 shows this is an ongoing problem.

King Von Houltum showed MPR the results of a speed test while being interviewed.

“We have 0.4 megabits per second,” said King Von Holtum, who pays Frontier for 6 Mbps service. “And our upload is pretty much nonexistent.”

Melody Webster’s family makes regular 5-mile trips into the town of Cannon Falls to use their local library’s Wi-Fi service. It is the only way her children can complete their school assignments, because Frontier’s DSL struggles to open web pages. Webster has called Frontier again and again about the speed problems, but told the public radio station she gets “lied to or pretty much laughed at.”

That’s a story Frontier’s balladeer is not likely to put to song.

Frontier spent an undisclosed amount hiring the ad agency responsible for the new advertising.

“A brand campaign must be creative and memorable. It also has to drive a client’s business forward,” said Lance Jensen, chief creative officer of Hill Holliday, which created the campaign. “The Balladeer is a fun and accessible character who brings humanity and humor to the frustrating experience of dealing with internet and TV service. We can’t wait to put him to work for the Frontier brand.”

The campaign launches this week in Frontier markets nationally and includes broadcast, radio, online video, out of home, digital and social components.

An “affable balladeer” sings about the frustrations of internet users who do not get the internet service they paid for, in this new 30-second ad from Frontier Communications. Ironically, slow speed is the most common complaint about Frontier’s own DSL service. (0:30)

This week, the FCC announced bidding has finished for the latest Connect America Fund (CAF) broadband subsidies auction.

Once again, the FCC gave first priority to incumbent phone companies to bid for the subsidies, which defray the cost of expanding internet access to homes and businesses otherwise unprofitable to serve. Nearly $2 billion was left on the table by disinterested phone companies after the first round of bidding was complete, so the FCC’s second round opened up the leftover money to other telecom companies.

Winning bidders will receive their portion of $198 million annually in 120 monthly installments over the next ten years to build out rural networks. In return, providers must promise to deliver one broadband and voice service product at rates comparable to what urban residents pay for service. The winning bids, still to be publicly announced, will come from rural electric and phone cooperatives, satellite internet providers, fixed wireless companies, and possibly a handful of cable operators. But much of the money overall will be spent by independent phone companies rolling out slow, copper-based, DSL service.

Because the total committed will take a decade to reach providers, rural Americans will likely face a long wait before what purports to be “broadband” actually reaches their homes and businesses.

While many co-ops will spend the money to expand their own homegrown fiber-to-the-home services, most for-profit providers will rely on wireless or copper networks to deliver service.

Telefónica Spain

Overseas, broadband expansion is headed in another direction — expansion of fiber-to-the-home service, with little interest in investing significant sums on furthering old technology copper wire based DSL and fixed wireless services. The expansion is moving so quickly, Verizon made certain to sign long-term contracts with optical fiber suppliers like Corning in 2017 to guarantee they will not be affected by expected shortages in optical fiber some providers are already starting to experience.

Virtually everywhere in developed countries (except the United States), fiber broadband is quickly crowding out other technologies, despite the significant cost of replacing copper networks with new optical fiber cables. If a provider is brave enough to discount investor demand for quick returns and staying away from big budget upgrade efforts, the rewards include happier customers and a clear path to increased revenue and business success.

Not every Wall Street bank is reluctant to support fiber upgrades. Credit Suisse sees a need for optical fiber today, not tomorrow among incumbent phone and cable companies.

“The cost of building fiber is less than the cost of not building fiber,” the bank advised its clients. The reason is protecting market share and revenue. Phone companies that refuse to upgrade or move at a snail’s pace to improve their broadband product (typically DSL offering 2-12 Mbps) have lost significant market share, and those losses are accelerating. Ditching copper also saves companies millions in maintenance and repair costs.

Canada’s Telus is a case in point. Its CEO, Darren Entwistle, reports Telus’ effort to expand fiber optics across its western Canada service area is already paying off.

“We see churn rates on fiber that are 25% lower than copper,” Entwistle said. “35% lower in high-speed internet access, and 15% lower on TV — 25% lower on average. We’re seeing a reduction in repair volumes to the tune of 40%. We’re seeing a nice improvement in revenue per home of close to 10%.”

Telus promotes its fiber to the home initiative in western Canada as a boost to medical care, education, the economy, and the Canadian communities it serves. (1:31)

Telus’ chief competitor is Shaw Communications, western Canada’s largest cable company. Fiber optics allows Telus to vastly expand internet speeds and reliability, an improvement over distance sensitive DSL. Shaw Cable has boosted its own broadband speeds and offers product bundles that have been largely responsible for Telus’ lost customers, until its fiber network was switched on.

In economically challenged regions, fiber optic expansion is also growing, despite the cost. In Spain, Telefónica already provides service to 20 million Spaniards, roughly 70% of the country, and plans to continue reaching an additional two million homes and businesses a year until the country is completely wired with optical fiber. In Brazil, seven million customers will have access to fiber to the home service this year, expanding to ten million by 2020.

Verizon and AT&T regularly ring alarm bells in Congress that China is outpacing the United States in 5G wireless development, but are strangely silent about China’s vast and fast expansion into fiber optic broadband that companies like Verizon stopped significantly expanding almost a decade ago. China already has 328 million homes and businesses wired for fiber and added another five million homes in the month of June alone. AT&T will take a year to bring the same number of its own customers to its fiber to the home network.

The three countries that are most closely aligned with the mentality of most U.S. providers — the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany — are changing their collective minds about past arguments that fiber to the home service is too costly and isn’t necessary.

The government of Martin Turnbull’s cost concerns forced a modification of the ambitious proposal by the previous government to deploy fiber to the home service to most homes and businesses in the country. That decision to spend less is coming back to haunt the country after Anne Hurley, a former chief executive of the Communications Alliance involved in the National Broadband Network (NBN), admitted the cheaper NBN will face an expensive, large-scale replacement within a decade.

ABC Australia reports on findings that the country’s slimmed-down National Broadband Network is inadequate, and parts will have to be scrapped within 5-10 years (1:37)

Turnbull’s government advocated for less expensive fiber to the neighborhood technology that would still rely on a significant amount of copper wiring installed decades ago. The result, according to figures provided to a Senate committee, found only a quarter of Australians will be able to get 100 Mbps service from the NBN, with most getting top speeds between 25-50 Mbps.

Despite claims of technical advancements in DSL technology which have claimed dramatic speed improvements, Hurley was unimpressed with performance tests in the field and declared large swaths of the remaining copper network will have to be ripped up and replaced with optical fiber in just 5-10 years.

“If you look around the world other nations are not embracing fiber-to-the-[neighborhood] and copper … so yes, it’s all going to have to go and have to be replaced,” she said.

In the United Kingdom, austerity measures from a Conservative government and a reluctant phone company proved ruinous to the government’s promise to deliver “superfast broadband” (at least 24 Mbps) over a fiber to the neighborhood network critics called inadequate from the moment it was switched on in 2012. The government had no interest in financing a fiber to the home network across the UK, and BT Openreach saw little upside from spending billions upgrading the nation’s phone lines it now was responsible for maintaining as a spun-off entity from BT. In 2015, BT Openreach’s chief technology officer called fiber to the home service in Britain “impossible” and too expensive.

Two years later, while the rest of Europe was accelerating deployment of fiber to the home service, the government was embarrassed to report its broadband initiative was a flop in comparison, and broke a key promise made in 2012 that the UK would have the fastest broadband in Europe by 2015. Instead, the UK has dropped in global speed rankings, and is now in mediocre 35th place, behind the United States and over a dozen poorer members of the EU.

What was “impossible” two years ago is now essential today. The latest government commitment is to promote optical fiber broadband using a mix of targeted direct funding, “incentives” for private companies to wire fiber without the government’s help, and a voucher program defraying costs for enterprising villages and communities that develop their own innovative broadband enhancements. The best the government is willing to promise is that by 2033 — 15 years from now — every home in the UK will have fiber broadband.

Deutsche Telekom echoed BT Openreach with claims it was impossible to deliver fiber optic broadband throughout an entire country.

Deutsche Telekom’s dependence on broadband-enhancements-on-the-cheap — namely speed improvements by using vectoring and bonded DSL are increasingly unpopular for offering too little, too late in the country. Deutsche Telekom applauded itself for supplying more than 2.5 million new households with VDSL service in 2017, bringing the total number served by copper wire DSL in Germany to around 30 million. The company, which handles landline, broadband and wireless phone services, is slowly being dragged into fiber broadband expansion, but on a much smaller scale.

In March, Telekom announced a fiber to the home project in north-east Germany’s Western Pomerania/Rügen district for 40,000 homes and businesses. The network will offer speeds up to 1 Gbps. In July, Telekom was back with another announcement it was building a fiber optic network for Stuttgart and five surrounding districts Böblingen, Esslingen, Göppingen, Ludwigsburg, and Rems-Murr, encompassing 179 cities and municipalities. But most of the work will focus on wiring business parks. Residents will have a 50% chance of getting fiber to the home service by 2025, with the rest by 2030.

In contrast, the chances of getting fiber optic broadband in the U.S. is largely dependent on which provider(s) offer service. In the northeast, Verizon and Altice/Cablevision will go head to head competing with all-fiber networks. Customers serviced by AT&T also have a good chance of getting fiber to the home service… eventually, if they live in an urban or suburban community. Overbuilders and community broadband networks generally offer fiber service as an alternative to incumbent phone and cable companies, but many consumers don’t know about these under-advertised competitors. The chances for fiber optic service are much lower if you live in an area served by a legacy independent phone company like Frontier, Consolidated, Windstream, or CenturyLink. Their cable competitors face little pressure to rush upgrades to compete with companies that still sell DSL service offering speeds below 6 Mbps.

CAF funding from the FCC offers some rural areas a practical path to upgrades with the help of public funding, but with limited funds, a significant amount will be spent on yesterday’s technology. In just a few short years, residents will be faced with a choice of costly upgrades or a dramatic increase in the number of underserved Americans stuck with inadequate broadband. Policymakers should not repeat the costly mistakes of the United Kingdom and Australia, which resulted in penny wise-pound foolish decisions that will cost taxpayers significant sums and further delay necessary upgrades for the 21st century digital economy. The time for fiber upgrades is now, not in the distant future.