Charter Communications, the cable success story that wasn’t, wants consumers in Opelika, Alabama to believe their cable system is better by the last mile than any fiber-to-the-home system around.

Residents of Opelika are voting today on a referendum to allow the city to finance the construction of a true fiber to the home network for residents and businesses across the area.  They are up against cable industry opposition and a small group of vocal citizens who oppose the project on political grounds.

Charter Cable, still dusting itself off from bankruptcy reorganization, told Fierce Telecom that their hybrid coaxial-fiber cable system was actually better than an all-fiber network.

What’s most interesting here is Charter’s stance that their HFC network, which would also include fiber, is more resilient than an all-fiber last mile network. “This delivery system keeps the cost down for residential customers while supplying direct fiber optic connections to businesses requiring the maximum bandwidth available nationally,” said Skip James, government relations director for Charter Communications. “If a coaxial cable is damaged by traffic accidents or excavation procedures, it can be repaired rather quickly, whereas a damaged fiber optic cable will take hours or days to repair, depending on the scenario.”

Obviously fiber cuts can happen with cable networks too, and this kind of argument is an about face for cable operators, who are usually busy trying to convince people that fiber and cable are largely indistinguishable.

Opelika’s network capabilities will be readily apparent once consumers realize a fiber to the home system can easily deliver the same upstream and downstream speeds, something Charter Cable can never offer on its network.  Fiber is also near-infinitely upgradeable, while cable systems are forced to take away analog channels from customers to make room for services that are already provided on most true fiber networks.

We present a week of cable companies acting badly….  They charge you top dollar and leave their cables hanging all over the place.  Learn how homeowners turn in frustration to the media to correct sometimes dangerous installations that are accidents waiting to happen.  Cable Week on Stop the Cap!

Norman Sullivan in Greenville, S.C.,  has lived with low hanging Charter Cable wires for nearly a year.  Despite making at least 10 calls to the cable company with no response, the cable line just keeps drooping lower and lower in his backyard, and Sullivan isn’t even a Charter Cable customer.

Sullivan’s neighbor, Joyce Kirskey, has the same problem and she -is- a Charter Cable customer, but her repeated calls to the cable company didn’t bring a response either.

“If I’m gonna be paying them every month, they’re looking for their money, I want some good service,” Kirksey told WSPA-TV’s Problem Solver.

Even worse than the low-hanging lines is the terrible reception she’s getting in her home.

“My TV has been going in and out, just blinking on and off all the time,” Kirksey said.

When WSPA notified Charter it was about to be featured on the 6 ‘o clock local news, the cable company finally got moving.

By that afternoon, a Charter crew was wandering the neighborhood fixing a variety of cable issues.  Charter apologized to all concerned, claiming it was an isolated incident and would continue working on the problem until it was resolved.

But Sullivan told Channel 7’s Problem Solver they wished Charter had taken care of the problem sooner.

“They are supposed to come out here and do their job, it’s what they’re getting paid for,” Sullivan said.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSPA Greenville Dangling Cable Line Worries Residents In Greenville 7-12-10.flv[/flv]

WSPA-TV in Greenville, S.C., has a Problem Solver segment to help viewers with stubborn problems they can’t resolve themselves.  Watch how the station managed to get Charter Cable out to fix a problem it ignored for nearly a year, despite more than 10 calls to the cable company requesting assistance.  (1 minute)

Los Angeles County's cable franchise map dating back to 2005 shows the county divided between Adelphia, Comcast, and Time Warner. Today, Time Warner Cable controls most of the county's cable service but still relies on some legacy equipment in place from the days of Adelphia and Comcast. Calabasas was formerly served by Adelphia. (click to enlarge map)

Some southern California residents continue to express anger and frustration at some poor business and customer service practices provided by Charter Cable and Time Warner Cable, both of which provide service in the community of Calabasas.

Unfortunately, city officials had their hands tied in resolving consumer complaints because California is one of several states that abandoned local cable franchising in favor of less accountable statewide cable franchises that carry few terms and conditions that protect California consumers.

The Calabasas Communications and Technology Commission dealt with several complaints raised by residents during its May meeting, often echoed by the commissioners themselves.

From the Calabasas Patch:

Resident Alvin Lindenauer spoke about his dissatisfaction with Charter.

“Charter has a long history of being less than competent in providing cable service,” he said.

Lindenauer’s complaints with Charter included misleading advertising, poor customer service and, most prominent, “improper billing practices.”

He said he received several erroneous notices of past due payments that resulted in forced late fees.

Lindenauer referred to Charter as “corrupt and deceptive” in its business practices.

He proposed that the commission hold Charter Cable more accountable for its service and reduce the city’s long-term contract with the company.

Charter Cable officials denied the company was either corrupt or deceptive, stating the company will work to address any customer service or billing complaints.

Cable commissions like those in Calabasas actually hold almost no power over incumbent cable or competing phone company video offerings.  The federal government deregulated the vast majority of cable operations as part of the 1996 Communications Act.  While many municipalities have cable boards or commissions, most are little more than venting stations for frustrated residents who feel their local provider is unresponsive.  Sometimes appeals like those by Lindenauer can get the attention of company executives and “guilt them” into intervening with intransigent customer service agents, especially when the media is watching.

Calabasas residents were also upset with Time Warner Cable — primarily because of its set-top boxes and a recent “upgrade” to its program guide software.

Customers are upset with the company’s legacy Motorola cable boxes still used on the part of the system originally owned by Adelphia.  Some residents inquired about why Time Warner doesn’t use the “more reliable” Scientific-Atlanta converters used in other parts of Los Angeles county.

Calabasas residents also complained Time Warner’s cable signals are intermittently plagued by “tiling,” an irritating digital artifact that appears like a series of small boxes that appear frozen or moving across a digital picture.  Company officials responded that the problems are in software, not in the set-top boxes, and they would work on them.

Time Warner’s Los Angeles county cable system is actually configured of several different cable systems acquired from Comcast and bankrupt Adelphia Cable a few years ago.  Those systems still have important differences in technology and channel lineups.  Despite those differences, Time Warner Cable collectively controls most of Los Angeles county’s cable systems.  Charter has most of the rest.

[You can watch the commission’s proceedings from their video archive.  Start watching at 17:35 to view Mr. Lindenauer’s complaint and follow-up.]

Charter customers thank the company for the speed increases

Charter Cable has made it clear — no metered billing and no enforcement of its “soft usage caps.”

“We have no plans to introduce metered billing,” Ketzer told Broadband Reports, adding no trials were forthcoming either.

But Charter Cable did say bandwidth consumption is a concern for the company, and a measurement tool to educate customers about their current usage was on the way.

“Right now we are gathering requirements to develop a resource so that customers can monitor and control their bandwidth resources,” said Ketzer. “This was something that our customers have been requesting and we want to meet that need.”

Separately, Charter also announced speed upgrades for many of its broadband customers.  Starting this morning, customers can briefly unplug their cable modems to reset them and enjoy some increased speeds at no additional cost.

Charter's old speed tiers (shown above) got an upgrade this morning. Prices quoted are for new customers. Existing customers: add $15 -- Internet Only customers: add $25

The new speed increases impact three of their broadband plans.  Only “Lite” speeds remain unchanged:

• Lite: Remains the same at “up to” 1 Mbps/128 kbps
• Express: Increases from 5/1 Mbps to 8/1 Mbps
• Plus: Increases from 10/2 Mbps to 16/2 Mbps
• Max: Increases from 20/2 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps

Charter advises Max customers will need to exchange their current cable modem to receive the new speeds.  They come as a result of DOCSIS 3 upgrades, which requires a modem that supports that standard.

Some Charter customers can go even faster with the company’s Ultra60 plan delivering 60/5Mbps service for $139.99 a month.  Customer promotions, typically running six months, can cut the cost to $109.99 during the promotional period.

Increasing speeds and shelving Internet Overcharging schemes like usage limits and usage-based billing build customer loyalty and bring new customers, particularly at the expense of telephone company DSL plans, which cannot compete on speed.  Most DSL providers have stopped increasing speeds beyond the maximum 6-10 Mbps they have advertised for years.  Many barely deliver 3 Mbps.

AT&T, which provides service in many Charter markets, has raised the stakes for competition as it rolls out U-verse, an advanced type of DSL service that can support video, telephone, and faster broadband.  In Reno, where AT&T has conducted usage cap experiments for more than a year, the news that Charter won’t comes as welcome news.

Stop the Cap! reader David canceled AT&T service when he found out the company was testing a usage cap in Reno.

“When we found out they were limiting us (after we signed up), we not only canceled AT&T broadband, but also disconnected our two phone lines as well,” David writes.  “We won’t do business with a company that wants to limit our broadband use and we resented being guinea pigs in the first place.”

David adds a “retention specialist” offered to waive his participation in the trial, but he wasn’t interested and is not looking back.

“Unless you deliver a clear message these ripoffs are unacceptable in a way they understand – money – they will just come back for more once the ‘experiment’ is over,” he said.

David is happy with his Charter Cable service, and estimates AT&T’s experiment cost them nearly $200 a month in revenue they used to earn from his family.

“Their cost control program certainly worked — for me.  I’m saving more money with Charter than what I was paying AT&T,” he adds. “I wouldn’t have switched except for their usage cap.”

Charter itself has some broadband usage limits, but they are almost never enforced.

Charter currently defines “normal” residential usage at around 15 gigabytes per month.  Charter’s usage allowances appear in its “excessive use” clause in the Acceptable Use Policy:

Residential service usage will not exceed 100GB of bandwidth per month for Customers subscribing to Services of 15 Mbps or less per month and 250GB of bandwidth per month for Customers subscribing to Service over 15 Mbps and up to 25 Mbps. Charter reserves the right to revise usage limits or to implement additional usage limits. In the event residential usage exceeds the above-described limits Customer will be notified and required to either limit Customer’s bandwidth consumption to permitted levels/limits or subscribe to a Service with a higher monthly bandwidth limit if a higher limit subscription is available.

Since these limits have not been aggressively enforced, they are known as “soft usage caps.”  Most Internet Service Providers have provisions for such limits in their customer agreements, although they are usually only enforced only when a customer’s usage reaches into the stratosphere (often terabytes of usage are involved) or creates a problem for the provider.

Still, some customers dropped Charter Cable even over the defined “soft caps,” switching to competitors who had no such provisions in their usage policies.  Consumers hate Internet Overcharging schemes, and will readily change providers to avoid them.

[flv width=”500″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Charter Thank You Ad 3-1-2010.flv[/flv]

Charter Cable created this ad from customer recorded submissions sent over their Internet service (1 minute)

Channel Siberia

Looking for your local town government meeting on Charter Cable?  Missouri residents may have to send out a search party to find their local public, educational, and government (PEG) channels, because Charter has moved them way, way up the dial for some of their subscribers.

A Lewis & Clark-like expedition by Washington, Missouri councilman Guy Midkiff found his — in the channel 900s range:

PEG programing has been given the heave-ho to stratospheric 900 plus channel, closet. Apparently if your TV is more than 4 years old, you can’t even get the PEG channels without a $5 per month additional fee and a converter box.

What happened to them? Seems the state of Missouri took over the regulation of cable franchises back in 2007. What that meant was that local communities – like Washington, lost all leverage to demand cable hold up  the long standing bargain of making PEG programing available on the low channels. This was part of the original basic package of programing. 

If memory serves, 900 channels used to be the domain of online shoppers. How coincidental that these shopping channels are showing up in the old real estate that was once reserved for PEG. I am sure the fact that cable companies get a piece of the pie from shopping channel sales, has nothing to do with the change of addresses.

Midkiff

It’s another intended consequence of AT&T’s statewide video franchising bill, just one of many making their way across the state legislatures where AT&T provides service.  By removing local oversight of video franchising, the power to ensure residents access to local public, educational, and government programming is lost.  Only the benevolence of the pay television provider keeps it on the dial at all, and when shopping channels show providers the green stuff for an envied lower channel position, it’s a safe bet PEG channels will receive the industry equivalent of an eviction notice.

Cable channel real estate has good and bad neighborhoods.  The lower the channel number you secure, the more prestigious the address.  That’s because most viewers who start channel flipping start from the bottom and work their way up.  Most land on a channel below 40.  Channels 41-60, which used to be the cable ghetto, are now firmly in the “affordable housing” realm.  For those unlucky enough to find themselves above channel 60, the cable industry has a term for that landscape — Channel Siberia.

Under those circumstances, you can image how many viewers are brave enough to make the trek all the way to channels 900 and up.