After 44 years in the cable television business, the Dolan family has agreed to part with its prize possession, Cablevision Systems Corp. in a $17.7 billion dollar deal with Patrick “The Slasher” Drahi’s Altice NV.

The transaction will profoundly impact Cablevision’s employees, customers, and potentially the cable business in general in the New York City metropolitan area, where Cablevision’s 3.1. million customers live.

Who is Patrick Drahi?

Although few Americans have heard of the self-made billionaire Patrick Drahi, most of French-speaking Europe knows Mr. Drahi only too well, regularly criticized in the French press for surrounding himself with debt-laden acquisitions, stiffing vendors and suppliers, and paying rock-bottom wages to the employees that remain after constant campaigns of ruthless cost cutting.

Drahi’s idol is none other than cable magnate billionaire John Malone, the man pulling the strings at Charter Communications. In the 1970s and 1980s, Malone ran America’s largest cable conglomerate – Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), a company castigated by customers for high rates and poor service about as much as Comcast is today.

Malone’s reputation with the U.S. Congress reached its lowest point in the 1980s when then-Sen. Al Gore, Jr. (D-Tenn.) alternately accused Malone of heading a monopolistic cable “Cosa Nostra” that extorted his constituents with rate increases that exceeded 180% in less than five years and the “Darth Vader of Cable.” Malone taught Drahi that massive sums of money could be made buying and selling cable television (and later broadband) over systems that are usually de facto monopolies. Although entertainment is always in high demand, few governments treat the cable systems that offer it as an “essential utility,” allowing them to charge whatever they want for service.

From his earliest days working for a small cable operator, Drahi dreamed of building a cable empire buying and selling cable systems, extracting whatever he could from subscribers. One of his earliest techniques was flouting a French telecommunications law that, at the time, forbade the carriage of non-French language channels. His cable systems quietly added Arabic language networks to entice the large North African immigrant community in France to sign up for service. Drahi did not directly promote the networks, relying on word-of-mouth to deliver sales in the Arabic speaking community.

The Sacred Monster

While very conservative about spending money on wages, service upgrades, and technology, customers of Drahi-owned cable companies report he had no problem raising their rates. Numericable’s customer satisfaction rating rivals that of Comcast — a one-star cable company charging five-star prices.

Drahi

The announced acquisition of Cablevision (and earlier Suddenlink) by Drahi’s company — Altice NV, came with glowing coverage from the American media, particularly cable business news channels, the Wall Street press, and the New York Times. A Sept. 7, 2015 piece by Nicola Clark in the Times presented Drahi as a classic “rags to riches” success story, noting he loathes being interviewed and allegedly leads a humble existence:

Despite a personal fortune estimated at close to €17 billion, Mr. Drahi indulges in few of the trappings of great wealth, friends and colleagues said. Although he keeps several elegant homes — in Geneva, Paris and Tel Aviv — his personal tastes and habits hew to the mundane. He wears a plastic Swatch instead of a Rolex and often arrives at business meetings on foot or a bicycle, instead of by chauffeured car.

Clark only mentions in passing she relied almost entirely on a series of interviews with “a half-dozen friends and colleagues” to paint what turned out to be a one-sided picture of Mr. Drahi for American readers. That story had eyes rolling among staffers in the offices of French newspaper Les Echos, incredulous at the American infatuation with a man the newspaper calls the “sacré monstre” — sacred monster. In New York, reporter Lucie Robequain, foreign business correspondent for the French daily, tried to share the scene at the Goldman Sachs-organized Communacopia conference where the deal was personally announced by Mr. Drahi for her French readers.

“Newspapers [in America] devote entire pages [about Drahi], emphasizing his self-made-man side which Americans love so much,” Robequain noted. She added the New York Times painted Drahi an almost romantic figure, proposing to his wife one hour after meeting her and then putting everything between them at risk to build his personal fortune.

A later piece in the Times on Sept. 17 by Emily Steel and Mark Scott also was the subject of derision in the European press. Steel and Scott called Altice a “bold new player” in the American cable market and gave Dexter Goei, one of Drahi’s lieutenants (some in the French press prefer ‘minion’) space to gush about the game-changing deal. Goei joined Altice in 2009, having worked for 15 years in investment banking with JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley until the Great Recession arrived.

“There’s a new sheriff in town, and we’re probably going to run it a little differently,” Goei said during the investor conference in New York on Thursday that unveiled the deal.

Phantom Fiber

The Times piece also relied on unnamed “analysts” dangling the promise of fiber optics to appease subscribers concerned about a legendary cost-cutter taking the helm of the cable company.

[…] Analysts said Altice invests heavily in new infrastructure — with a focus on upgrading fixed-line networks with the latest fiber-optic technology. The priority, analysts said, is to provide subscribers with faster Internet connection speeds at competitive prices.

Previous deals involving Altice (Image: Financial Times)

In Europe, the press is skeptical about promised upgrades, noting Altice is “an empire built on a mountain of debt” largely made possible by quantitative easing and record low interest rates, which permit companies to finance buyouts on the cheap. Drahi says he can save money through synergy — sharing operations and minimizing the need for customers to reach out for customer service. Altice officials claim just by simplifying Cablevision’s bills, the company can save $14 million annually.

Drahi’s success story with Wall Street and other investors comes from his ability to cut costs at acquired companies, often dramatically. It is part of the informal deal with investors that has allowed the company generous credit to continue its buying spree. The Cablevision deal promises the Dolans and other investors only $3.3 billion in cash. The rest of the purchase price will come from raising $8.6 billion in new debt, saddled on Cablevision’s books inside Altice.

So while unnamed analysts are promising fiber upgrades for Cablevision customers, the Financial Times and CNBC report only one thing will be on Cablevision’s menu post-merger: spending a lot less, not more. Drahi seems to agree.

In a slide presentation to investors, Altice compares Cablevision’s $49 a month in operating expenses per customer against what its Numericable operation in France spends on its customers: $14 a month.

So how does Numericable spend three times less on subscribers than Cablevision?

Cost Cutting Specialists

Say hello to Michel Combes, former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent. Two years ago, he took leadership of the company that was better known by many as Bell Labs. Known as a cost-cutter, Combes quickly announced plans to strip the company of less profitable business units and fired about 10,000 workers while also holding the line on salaries (except for his) of the remaining employees. After two years in the leadership position, Combes engineered the sale of the company to Nokia, putting himself out of a job. But he won’t be hurting. A breathtaking golden parachute package approved by his colleagues on Alcatel Lucent’s board caused a political furor in France.

Combes

Combes’ departure bonus was originally planned to amount to $15 million in stock after completing the company’s sale to Nokia, an amount Emmanuel Macron, France’s economic minister, called shocking and irresponsible. Under pressure, the board has since cut the payoff roughly in half. But according to L’Observateur, Drahi has offered his friend an even more lucrative “golden hello” — stock options awarded as a signing bonus worth up to $100 million. Combes’ first role will be to serve as Altice’s chief operating officer, presiding over new rounds of cost-cutting at the company’s various acquisitions. One item spared from review is Combes’ own compensation package. Those under him are not so lucky.

Wages and Jobs

“I do not like to pay salaries, I pay as little as I can,” Drahi told investors at the Goldman Sachs event last week. Drahi complained more than 300 employees at Cablevision were being paid more than $300,000 a year. “This we will change.“

In addition to a large number of expected layoffs at Cablevision, widespread salary reductions are also likely to be forthcoming. Drahi’s cable companies have some of the smallest compensation packages in the industry, except at the top executive level.

Cablevision’s already testy relationship with some of its union employees will likely grow much worse under Drahi’s leadership. But that battle may have to wait until another day. In February, the union ratified a two-year agreement with Cablevision. In Europe, Drahi’s reputation among public unions is so poor many of the opinions expressed by unionized workers cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

Suppliers complain Drahi’s companies don’t pay their bills.

In Lisbon, Jorge Felix – a representative of the trade union organization of workers at PT (Portugal Telecom) warns U.S. unions should get everything from Altice and Mr. Drahi in writing.

“There are commitments made by Altice before our union and are written,” Felix said, adding that he was disturbed by Drahi’s attitude toward his middle class employees. Felix notes Drahi has already created tremendous controversy in Portugal by stonewalling payment of suppliers and vendors’ outstanding invoices until the company secures written agreements promising enormous discounts, often amounting to 30-40% off current prices. That, in turn, can cause layoffs and salary reductions at suppliers, enriching Altice but hurting just about everyone else.

Drahi: Looking to run faster than the music

France’s Economic Minister Macron seems to agree, lashing out at Drahi’s now familiar business model.

“Is it good for the economy? The answer is no,” he said. “Is it good for investment? The answer is no. Is it good for employment? The answer is no.”

Macron also expressed concern that Drahi’s telecom empire was growing too fast — and taking on too much debt too quickly.

“I have a big concern in terms of leverage on Drahi due to its size and its place in our economy,” he said. “That’s my responsibility to look at it. He is looking to run faster than the music.”

Macron

Macron and his staff are concerned many of Drahi’s top executives and advisers come from New York’s financial markets and investment banks who either left or were pushed out in the turmoil of the Great Recession. Macron worries Drahi could be constructing the world’s first “too big to fail” cable operator that could cost nearly 100,000 jobs and require a government bailout if things turn sour.

Promised Service Improvement & Upgrades

With each cable consolidation merger, companies routinely promise subscribers will benefit from improved service. As mentioned earlier, unnamed analysts predict Drahi could invest up to $30 billion to improve the cable companies he buys in the United States.

“Which Altice are they talking about,” asks Stop the Cap! reader François Ribaud. “Altice owns Numericable, the largest cable company in metropolitan France, and if they are spending money it certainly was not on us.”

Ribaud’s original cable company Noos was acquired by Numericable in a massive acquisition effort in the early 2000s which today leaves almost all of France served by a single cable operator — Numericable.

“Things stagnated after that because Patrick Drahi does not spend money unless he has to,” Ribaud said. “The set-top boxes are outdated, the broadband service is often oversold, and heaven help you if there are service problems. The North African call center customer service help is an example for Numericable of getting what you pay for. They are awful.”

Charles Dolan

Drahi’s competitors in the fixed line and wireless markets eventually forced his wallet open, requiring an investment in fiber optics to help it remain a player in one of Europe’s most contentious telecommunications price wars. Drahi’s company in France lost subscribers as its network suffered from a lack of needed upgrades to manage demand.

“Now that I live in New York, I can say it is completely different than in France,” Ribaud said. “There is certainly no price war here, so there is no need to spend more money. The only people spending money will be customers I assure you.”

The Creator of Home Box Office Signs Off

Cablevision has been rumored “for sale” for so long without a deal, many analysts predicted the founding family would never let go of the company founded by 88-year old Charles Dolan, who helped transform what used to be a rural service to help customers receive distant over the air stations over a shared antenna into an urban and suburban subscription television business. Dolan made cable television something more.

Dolan founded Home Box Office (HBO), a commercial-free premium movie and entertainment channel free from the network “standards and practices” divisions that removed profanity and edited out violence from movies originally shown intact in theaters.

Cablevision systems used to cover 2.9 million subscribers in 19 states, many in small and medium-sized communities. By the 1990s, cable systems were swapped or sold to build regional empire-like service areas. Cablevision was no different, retreating to just three large service areas in New York, Cleveland and Boston. Soon thereafter, Cablevision would only serve metropolitan New York, particularly in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Long Island, parts of northern New Jersey and Connecticut, while exiting Cleveland and Boston.

The New York Post reported secret talks for the sale began in June, and a deal was complete at the end of August. Some of the discussions took place on a yacht floating around the Mediterranean. The Post reports the sale of Cablevision was an emotional experience for Dolan and he still thinks of the people who work there as family. But in the end, the Dolan family’s proceeds from the sale will reinforce their already well-established wealth and prominence. The same is unlikely to be true for Cablevision’s employees and customers under Drahi’s cost-conscious leadership.

Altice President Patrick Drahi at the French National Assembly in Paris, May 27, 2015. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

PARIS (Reuters) – Altice NV, one of the most acquisitive European telecoms groups, made a major move into the U.S. market on Thursday with a deal to buy fourth-largest operator Cablevision Systems Corp for $17.7 billion including debt.

Altice founder Patrick Drahi, who built a telecoms and cable empire via debt-fueled acquisitions in France, Portugal and Israel, is expected to apply his cost-cutting zeal to achieve a target of $900 million in annual synergies at Cablevision.

Drahi told a Goldman Sachs conference in New York that more than 300 Cablevision employees earn pay checks of over $300,000.

“This we will change,” said the French-Israeli billionaire.

Drahi entered the United States in May by buying a small, St Louis-based cable group called Suddenlink for $9.1 billion. He declared at the time that Altice would look for more acquisitions and eventually earn half its revenue from the United States.

In talks that began in June, Drahi convinced Charles Dolan, the patriarch of the Irish-American family that owns Cablevision, to sell. Cablevision has 3.1 million customers in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, but it has struggled with declining video subscribers like other cable companies.

“This deal takes us into the most affluent part of the United States and will be a good basis for further expansion,” said Altice Chief Executive Dexter Goei on a conference call. “We think there are significant ways to improve profitability by pooling purchasing and other costs between Cablevision and Suddenlink.”

Altice will pay $34.90 in cash per share, a 22 percent premium to Wednesday’s closing price of $28.54, giving Cablevision an equity value of $10 billion.

Shares in Altice closed up 0.68 percent at 24.5 euros, after gaining nearly 13 percent at the open. Cablevision shares rose 13.9 percent to $32.51, close to the offer price and a sign that few investors expect another bidder for Cablevision to emerge.

Altice’s bid for Cablevision will face scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, but analysts at Jefferies said they expected “little pushback.”

‘LITTLE PUSHBACK’ SEEN

Investors who back Drahi’s acquisition spree have made Altice the best-performing telecom stock in Europe this year, up more than 50 percent before Thursday’s deal, compared with an 8.4 percent rise in the sector index .

It is unclear what other assets Altice may target in the United States, where it will have to deal with fast-changing competition as cable groups consolidate and cope with subscriber losses to video streaming services such as Netflix.

Drahi has said Altice may look at properties to be sold under Charter Communications Inc’s takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc. Another target could be Cox Communications, but the closely held company has repeatedly said it is not for sale.

Drahi has also said that Altice could buy a U.S. wireless carrier “someday” to offer subscribers a “quadruple play” of Internet, television, and fixed and mobile telecoms.

Altice, which has been snapping up television and radio targets in Europe in recent months, will become the owner of the Newsday newspaper and local news channel News 12 Networks as part of the Cablevision deal.

Goei said the company would not interfere in the editorial side of the loss-making media businesses but would aim to run them more efficiently. He ruled out divesting the units.

He said the goal was to improve Cablevision’s margins to the “low 40s range” compared with current level of 28 percent, which lags the sector average of 35 percent.

Jim Dolan

Allan Nichols, analyst at investment research firm Morningstar, said he was “somewhat skeptical” that Altice could deliver on the savings since content costs were higher in the United States than in Europe.

“That said, Altice has an impressive record of cost reduction, and we expect it will be much more aggressive than the Dolan family in cutting expenses, including reducing employee count,” he wrote in a note.

To finance the deal, Altice will raise $8.6 billion in new debt mostly at Cablevision and none at its European holding, which is already highly leveraged. It will also raise $3.3 billion in equity, 70 percent by issuing shares at Altice and 30 percent from private equity fund BC Partners and Canadian investment fund CPP Investment Board, backers of Suddenlink.

Altice, whose corporate headquarters are in the Netherlands, said it would issue Class A shares, which have fewer voting rights than the B shares held largely by Drahi. Altice created the dual-class structure in June to allow more stock deals without Drahi losing control.

Cablevision CEO James Dolan said in a statement the time was right for new ownership and he and his family “believe that Patrick Drahi and Altice will be truly worthy successors.”

The Dolans will continue to own media and sports assets through AMC Networks and The Madison Square Garden Company — owner of the New York Rangers and New York Knicks — which are not part of the deal.

JP Morgan, BNP Paribas and Barclays have committed to finance the deal and also advised Altice on it. Cablevision was advised by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Guggenheim Securities and PJT Partners.

[flv]http://phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC A deal 20 years in the making Altice to buy Cablevision 9-17-15.flv[/flv]

CNBC reports Cablevision has finally sold out… to Altice NV a cable operator that dominates in France. (2:51)

[flv]http://phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Mergers in telecoms sector not over yet 9-17-15.flv[/flv]

Neil Campling, global TMT analyst at Aviate Global, says there could be further mergers in the telecoms market following Altice’s acquisition of U.S. provider Cablevision. (3:20)

 (By Leila Abboud. Additional reporting by Rob Smith in London and Liana B. Baker and Malathi Nayak in New York; Writing by Christian Plumb; Editing by Andrew Callus and Mark Potter)

Drahi

After failing in a surprise bid to acquire Time Warner Cable out from under Charter Communications, European cable magnate Patrick Drahi has spent much of this summer quietly working to make sure that never happens again.

The French press is buzzing over Drahi’s decision to move his corporate headquarters from the business friendly Grand Duchy of Luxembourg — nestled between Belgium, France, and Germany — north to the Netherlands. The move is mostly on paper — attorneys drafted the agreement that effectively transferred Altice SA to Drahi’s Dutch subsidiary Altice NV and shareholders approved.

Why move the company from one of Europe’s most business-friendly countries to Holland, a country with a long history of corporate oversight? It wasn’t for the stroopwafels.

The Netherlands is rare among most European countries because it allows corporations to set up “dual-class share structures.” That means nothing to 99% of Dutch citizens and the majority of our readers, but it means a lot if you are a billionaire running a hungry multi-national corporation using other people’s money to gain control of companies on your acquisition list.

With the move, Drahi can embark on a breathtaking acquisition spree without diluting the control he has over his growing cable empire. Going forward, Altice will apply different voting rights to various classes of stock offered to investors. Drahi now holds 58.5% of Altice stock. But his shares are special because they grant him 92% of the voting power. Other shareholders will find they are not entitled to an equal say in how the public company is run.

Altice admitted to regulators they designed the new share structure to give Mr. Drahi greater flexibility for financing and corporate transactions without threatening his control of the company. Altice called that “a value-enhancing strategy without diluting voting control.” This means Drahi can offer generous amounts of Altice stock to help fund future takeover deals without worrying that will reduce his control over the company.

If Drahi were to recklessly launch a spending spree of epic proportions to the consternation of shareholders, there will be little recourse and almost no chance of a shareholder revolt. But just to make sure, Drahi gets to pick six of Altice’s eight board members. He also won an agreement with board members who also hold shares in Altice granting him absolute and automatic support of all his proposals for 30 years. On top of that, he is entitled to “negative control” over the board, which means in any vote, he is allowed to cast a number of votes equal to all other board members.

With generous grants of authority like these passing muster, it’s no wonder executives of corporations around the world are urging consideration to move the corporate headquarters to the land of tulips and windmills. Fiat Chrysler already did, at the behest of Italy’s Agnelli family, which controls the Italian-American car company with a tight grip. Mylan, a producer of generic pharmaceutical drugs, managed to fend off Israeli rival Teva Pharmaceuticals, using Holland’s tolerance of executive-friendly poison pill maneuvers to keep unfriendly takeover artists away.

Now that the move to an Amsterdam post office box is complete, Drahi is in the process of rearming his war chest for another assault on the American mainland. The French newspaper l’Humanité warns it is more conniving from the “telecom vampire” that sucked the blood out of competitive cable in France. The newspaper cited deregulation and privatization to be great for billionaires like Drahi, but a bad deal for consumers.

Since the 1990s, telecom executives in Europe and North America have promised regulators a lot in return for deregulation and self-oversight. Allowing companies a free rein would stimulate competition and private investment to finance and construct next generation networks, they claimed.

But l’Humanité uncovered another motivation for telecom magnates like Drahi: to get filthy rich. The newspaper quotes one well-known anecdote about why Drahi got into the cable business — because after studying Forbes articles ranking the fortunes of the 1%, Drahi set his sights on the industry where there were the most billionaires – telecommunications.

Keeping that newly privatized and deregulated wealth requires ruthlessness for others but protection for your allies and yourself. Drahi followed the teachings of American cable magnate John Malone (who is Charter Communications’ biggest shareholder today) and began a debt-fueled buying spree of independent cable systems, quickly followed by ruthless cost-cutting at the acquired companies, earning him the nickname “The Slasher,” among others less charitable. His critics say he has a lot of nerve, because in many instances Drahi billed the companies he acquired for consulting and management fees. BFM Business reports Drahi has only one bottom line when making up his mind: how much generated cash will come from the decision.

The real money would start rolling in at the height of the dot.com boom. Regulators accepted a bid by Drahi and two of his allies to create the fourth French telecom operator — a wireless venture known as Fortel. The three men promised to invest more than $3 billion building the network, an amount called “not credible” by some regulators and a number of industry leaders. But since the frequencies went to those who promised the most investment, Fortel won. Drahi was named president of the company.

Just before the dot.com bubble burst and Fortel seemed to be wavering, Drahi sold many of his interests to UPC, a European cable conglomerate owned by his mentor John Malone. In early 2001, the wireless project was scrapped and Fortel itself was sold for scrap, never to build the promised network. But by then, Drahi was working at UPC with Malone on a massive cable industry acquisition and consolidation strategy. During his career at UPC, Drahi was in charge of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire French cable operators including: RCF, Time Warner Cable France, Rhone Cable Vision, and Videopole InterComm.

UPC declared bankruptcy in 2002.

Malone’s company quickly became overextended and very deep in debt when they suddenly stopped paying creditors in the fall of 2002. But before that happened, Drahi once again had the good fortune to cash out of UPC before the roof collapsed, selling his own Médiaréseaux cable system to Malone’s company at full value just before UPC went bankrupt. The bankruptcy that followed didn’t hurt Malone much and Drahi not at all.

Unwilling to rescue UPC’s faltering operations before bankruptcy, Malone waited until after the cable company went Chapter 11, when 65% of its debt was erased in court proceedings in return for a $99.8 million fresh infusion of cash from UGC/Liberty Media — another Malone-controlled venture that suddenly emerged with a checkbook. That bought Malone’s Liberty Media a 65.5% stake in the rescued company. Vendors, smaller debtors, and other shareholders fared far worse. Most received little, if any of the money owed them, and the remaining shareholders were given just 2% ownership of the company after it emerged from bankruptcy.

Drahi re-emerged on the French business scene after squirreling away his UPC cable proceeds in his new venture Altice, originally launched in Luxembourg, listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange, and controlled by another holding company owned by Drahi housed in the British tax haven of the Channel Islands. Drahi himself was, for a time, a Swiss resident domiciled in Canton Zermatt, another tax haven with tax thresholds that favor the super-wealthy. Drahi now qualifies.

Within four years of Altice’s existence, the company has acquired 99% of France’s cable systems. Drahi has since looked abroad to consummate more deals.

When an Israeli cable system became available to buy, Drahi suddenly became a citizen of Israel and rented an apartment in the country, mostly to meet Israel’s citizenship requirements to acquire the HOT cable system. After the sale was complete, HOT raised its rates, most recently by 20 percent.

Le Echos, a French newspaper, has watched Drahi plow his way through French telecommunications for several years and summed up Drahi’s acquisition strategy in three words: It’s never enough.

The newspaper suspects Drahi will continue using the same techniques he has used in France for the last 20 years to create an empire in the United States. He will take on massive amounts of debt and use Wall Street and French investment banks to pay for most of his acquisitions, combined with generous shares in Altice stock for shareholders and top corporate executives. With Altice’s relocation complete, Drahi can make generous offers his targets cannot refuse, even when they are privately owned.

To start an American cable empire, Drahi will have to acquire smaller cable operators to build leverage for potential takeovers of larger operators later. His ability to throw massive sums of money on the table makes it very likely his next targets will be Cox Communications and Cablevision — both controlled by families that have held on in the cable business despite years of tentative acquisition offers or sales explorations. Both Cox and Cablevision offer access to larger U.S. cities. Other likely targets, including Mediacom, Cable One, and Midcontinent Communications, don’t. He can digest those companies later.

On June 24, Drahi told his fellow dinner guests at the Polytechnique Foundation, “For me, telecom is like pinball,” Drahi said. “As long as there are balls, I will play.”

Phillip “Speaking as a Customer” Dampier

Two defenders of large Internet Service Providers are coming to the defense of the broadband industry by questioning a Guardian article that reported major Internet Service Providers were intentionally allowing a degradation in performance of Content Delivery Networks and other high volume Internet traffic in a dispute over money.

Richard Bennett and Dan Rayburn today both published articles attempting to discredit Battle for the Net’s effort highlighting the impact interconnection disputes can have on consumers.

Rayburn:

On Monday The Guardian ran a story with a headline stating that major Internet providers are slowing traffic speeds for thousands of consumers in North America. While that’s a title that’s going to get a lot of people’s attention, it’s not accurate. Even worse, other news outlets like Network World picked up on the story, re-hashed everything The Guardian said, but then mentioned they could not find the “study” that The Guardian is talking about. The reason they can’t find the report is because it does not exist.

[…] Even if The Guardian article was trying to use data collected via the BattlefortheNet website, they don’t understand what data is actually being collected. That data is specific to problems at interconnection points, not inside the last mile networks. So if there isn’t enough capacity at an interconnection point, saying ISPs are “slowing traffic speeds” is not accurate. No ISP is slowing down the speed of the consumers’ connection to the Internet as that all takes place inside the last mile, which is outside of the interconnection points. Even the Free Press isn’t quoted as saying ISPs are “slowing” down access speed, but rather access to enough capacity at connection points.

Bennett:

In summary, it appears that Battle for the Net may have cooked up some dubious tests to support their predetermined conclusion that ISPs are engaging in evil, extortionate behavior.

It may well be the case that they want to, but AT&T, Verizon, Charter Cable, Time Warner Cable, Brighthouse, and several others have merger business and spectrum auction business pending before the FCC. If they were manipulating customer experience in such a malicious way during the pendency of the their critical business, that would constitute executive ineptitude on an enormous scale. The alleged behavior doesn’t make customers stick around either.

I doubt the ISPs are stupid enough to do what the Guardian says they’re doing, and a careful examination of the available test data says that Battle for the Net is actually cooking the books. There is no way a long haul bandwidth and latency test says a thing about CDN performance. Now it could be that Battle for the Net has as a secret test that actually measures CDNs, but if so it’s certainly a well-kept one. Stay tuned.

The higher line measures speeds received by Comcast customers connecting to websites handled by GTT in Atlanta. The lower line represents speeds endured by AT&T customers, as measured by MLab.

Stop the Cap! was peripherally mentioned in Rayburn’s piece because we originally referenced one of the affected providers as a Content Delivery Network (CDN). In fact, GTT is a Tier 1 IP Network, providing service to CDNs, among others — a point we made in a correction prompted by one of our readers yesterday.

Both Rayburn and Bennett scoff at Battle for the Net’s methodology, results, and conclusion your Internet Service Provider might care more about money than keeping customers satisfied with decent Internet speeds. Bennett alludes to the five groups backing the Battle for the Net campaign as “comrades” and Rayburn comes close to suggesting the Guardian piece represented journalistic malpractice.

Much was made of the missing “study” that the Guardian referenced in its original piece. Stop the Cap! told readers in our original story we did not have a copy to share either, but would update the story once it became available.

We published our own story because we were able to find, without much difficulty, plenty of raw data collected by MLab from consumers conducting voluntary Internet Health Tests, on which Battle for the Net drew its conclusions about network performance. A review of that data independently confirmed all the performance assertions made in the Guardian story, with or without a report. There are obvious and undeniable significant differences in performance between certain Internet Service Providers and traffic distribution networks like GTT.

So let’s take a closer look at the issues Rayburn and Bennett either dispute or attempt to explain away:

1. MLab today confirmed there is a measurable and clear problem with ISPs serving around 75% of Americans that apparently involves under-provisioned interconnection capacity. That means the connection your ISP has with some content distributors is inadequate to handle the amount of traffic requested by customers. Some very large content distributors like Netflix increasingly use their own Content Delivery Networks, while others rely on third-party distributors to move that content for them. But the problem affects more than just high traffic video websites. If Stop the Cap! happens to reach you through one of these congested traffic networks and your ISP won’t upgrade that connection without compensation, not only will video traffic suffer slowdowns and buffering, but so will traffic from every other website, including ours, that happens to be sent through that same connection.

MLab: “Customers of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon all saw degraded performance [in NYC] during peak use hours when connecting across transit ISPs GTT and Tata. These patterns were most dramatic for customers of Comcast and Verizon when connecting to GTT, with a low-speed of near 1 Mbps during peak hours in May. None of the three experienced similar problems when connecting with other transit providers, such as Internap and Zayo, and Cablevision did not experience the same extent of problems.”

Our initial findings show persistent performance degradation experienced by customers of a number of major access ISPs across the United States during the first half of 2015. While the ISPs involved differ, the symptoms and patterns of degradation are similar to those detailed in last year’s Interconnections study: decreased download throughput, increased latency and increased packet loss compared to the performance through different access ISPs in the same region. In nearly all cases degradation was worse during peak use hours. In last year’s technical report, we found that peak-hour degradation was an indicator of under-provisioned interconnection capacity whose shortcomings are only felt when traffic grows beyond a certain threshold.

Patterns of degraded performance occurred across the United States, impacting customers of various access ISPs when connecting to measurement points hosted within a number of transit ISPs in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Many of these access-transit ISP pairs have not previously been available for study using M-Lab data. In September, 2014, several measurement points were added in transit networks across the United States, making it possible to measure more access-transit ISP interconnection points. It is important to note that while we are able to observe and record these episodes of performance degradation, nothing in the data allows us to draw conclusions about who is responsible for the performance degradation. We leave determining the underlying cause of the degradation to others, and focus solely on the data, which tells us about consumer conditions irrespective of cause.

Rayburn attempts to go to town highlighting MLab’s statement that the data does not allow it to draw conclusions about who is responsible for the traffic jam. But any effort to extend that to a broader conclusion the Guardian article is “bogus” is folly. MLab’s findings clearly state there is a problem affecting the consumer’s Internet experience. To be fair, Rayburn’s view generally accepts there are disputes involving interconnection agreements, but he defends the current system that requires IP networks sending more traffic than they return to pay the ISP for a better connection.

Rayburn’s website refers to him as “the voice of industry.”

1. Rayburn comes to the debate with a different perspective than ours. Rayburn’s website highlights the fact he is the “voice of the industry.” He also helped launch the industry trade group Streaming Video Alliance, which counts Comcast as one of its members. Anyone able to afford the dues for sponsor/founding member ($25,000 annually); full member ($12,500); or supporting member ($5,500) can join.

Stop the Cap! unreservedly speaks only for consumers. In these disputes, paying customers are the undeniable collateral damage when Internet slowdowns occur and more than a few are frequently inconvenienced by congestion-related slowdowns.

It is our view that allowing paying customers to be caught in the middle of these disputes is a symptom of the monopoly/duopoly marketplace broadband providers enjoy. In any industry where competition demands a provider deliver an excellent customer experience, few would ever allow these kinds of disputes to alienate customers. In Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Chicago, for example, AT&T has evidently made a business decision to allow its connections with GTT to degrade to just a fraction of the performance achieved by other providers. Nothing else explains consistent slowdowns that have affected AT&T U-verse and DSL customers for months on end that involve GTT while Comcast customers experience none of those problems.

We also know why this is happening because AT&T and GTT have both confirmed it to Ars Technica, which covered this specific slowdown back in March. As is always the case about these disputes, it’s all about the money:

AT&T is seeking money from network operators and won’t upgrade capacity until it gets paid. Under its peering policy, AT&T demands payment when a network sends more than twice as much traffic as it receives.

“Some providers are sending significantly more than twice as much traffic as they are receiving at specific interconnection points, which violates our peering policy that has been in place for years,” AT&T told Ars. “We are engaged in commercial-agreement discussions, as is typical in such situations, with several ISPs and Internet providers regarding this imbalanced traffic and possible solutions for augmenting capacity.”

Missing from this discussion are AT&T customers directly affected by slowdowns. AT&T’s attitude seems uninterested in the customer experience and the company feels safe stonewalling GTT until it gets a check in the mail. It matters less that AT&T customers have paid $40, 50, even 70 a month for high quality Internet service they are not getting.

In a more competitive marketplace, we believe no ISP would ever allow these disputes to impact paying subscribers, because a dissatisfied customer can cancel service and switch providers. That is much less likely if you are an AT&T DSL customer with no cable competition or if your only other choice cannot offer the Internet speed you need.

1. Consolidating the telecommunications industry will only guarantee these problems will get worse. If AT&T is allowed to merge with DirecTV and expand Internet service to more customers in rural areas where cable broadband does not reach, does that not strengthen AT&T’s ability to further stonewall content providers? Of course it does. In fact, even a company the size of Netflix eventually relented and wrote a check to Comcast to clear up major congestion problems experienced by Comcast customers in 2014. Comcast could have solved the problem itself for the benefit of its paying customers, but refused. The day Netflix’s check arrived, problems with Netflix magically disappeared.

More mergers and more consolidation does not enhance competition. It entrenches big ISPs to play more aggressive hardball with content providers at the expense of consumers.

Even Rayburn concedes these disputes are “not about ‘fairness,’ it’s business,” he writes. “Some pay based on various business terms, others might not. There is no law against it, no rule that prohibits it.”

Battle for the Net’s point may be that there should be.

Cablevision has treated its broadband subscribers to a free speed boost for those signed up for the basic Optimum Online Internet tier. The old speed of 15/5Mbps has today been raised to 25/5Mbps, meeting the FCC’s minimum speed to qualify as broadband service.

Cablevision continues to sell its base Internet service at a non-promotional price of $39.99/month, considerably lower than most other cable operators.

“We are taking the next step as New York’s premiere connectivity company to provide a better, faster data experience both inside and outside the home at no additional cost,” Kristin Dolan, chief operating officer of Cablevision, said in a statement. “This speed increase, along with Optimum WiFi, provides a superior broadband experience to meet and exceed the needs of our customers.”

For now, Cablevision’s other widely available broadband tiers: Optimum Online Ultra 50, Optimum Online Ultra 75 and Optimum Online Ultra 101 are unchanged.