Despite claims from some industry-backed researchers and former members of Congress that Net Neutrality has reduced investment in telecommunications, a new research note from Deutsche Bank shows America’s top telephone and cable companies are spending billions on fiber upgrades to power wireless, business, and consumer broadband.

“Telecoms have become much more public signaling their intent to increase fiber investment, with AT&T and Verizon leading the spending ramp,” reports Deutsche Bank Markets Research.

Verizon has been on a fiber spending spree in the northeastern United States, signing contracts with Corning and Prysmian worth $1.3 billion to guarantee a steady supply of 2.5 million miles of fiber optic cable Verizon plans to buy over the next three years. Much of that spending allows Verizon to lay a foundation for its future 5G wireless services, which will require fiber to the neighborhood networks. But in cities like Boston, Verizon is also once again expanding its FiOS fiber to the home service to consumers.

AT&T is committed to connecting 12.5 million homes to gigabit-ready fiber broadband by 2019 — part of a deal it made with the FCC to win approval of its acquisition of DirecTV. AT&T claims it has already connected 5.5 million homes to its gigabit AT&T Fiber network, expected to reach 7 million by the end of this year.

Deutsche Bank thinks providers’ future drive towards 5G service will also simultaneously benefit fiber to the home expansion, because the same fiber network can power both services.

“To support the upcoming innovations such as autonomous driving, IoT, smart cities, the US needs to densify its fiber network,” Deutsche Bank said. “The U.S. fiber penetration rate is 20% vs. 75% for leading OECD countries, which suggests a large gap needs to be closed.”

Altice founder Patrick Drahi (second from left) and Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei (center) visit a Cablevision fiber deployment on Long Island, N.Y.

The bank predicts companies will spend around $175 billion over the next 10 years building out their fiber networks, with most of the spending coming from the phone companies, who may see fiber buildouts as their best attempt to level the playing field with cable operators’ hybrid fiber-coaxial cable networks. As cable operators expand their networks to reach more business parks, they have been gradually stealing market share for phone and data services from phone companies. Consumer broadband is also increasingly dominated by cable operators in areas where phone companies still rely on selling DSL services.

FierceCable notes Comcast and Altice have stepped up aggressive spending on fiber networks for their consumer and business customers. Altice is planning to decommission Cablevision’s existing coaxial cable network and move customers to fiber-to-the-home service. Comcast is deploying fiber services while still selling traditional cable broadband upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1, which supports substantially faster broadband speeds. The two networks co-exist side-by-side. Customer need dictates which network Comcast will use to supply service.

Customers benefit differently in each state, depending on what type of service is available. Comcast’s large footprint in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, is usually served by traditional coaxial cable. Verizon still sells DSL in much of the state. In Massachusetts, Verizon is building out its FiOS network to serve metro Boston while Comcast will depend on DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades to speed up its internet service. In New Jersey, long a battleground for Verizon’s FiOS service the company stopped aggressively expanding several years ago, Comcast has announced DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades for the entire state.

Independent phone companies are also seeing a bleak future without fiber upgrades. Both CenturyLink and Windstream are planning moderately aggressive fiber expansion, particularly in urban service areas and where they face fierce cable competition. Frontier continues its more modest approach to fiber expansion, usually placing fiber in new housing developments and in places where its copper facilities have been severely damaged or have to be relocated because of infrastructure projects.

None of the companies have cited Net Neutrality as a factor in their future broadband expansion plans. In fact, fiber networks have opened the door to new business opportunities to the companies installing them, and the high-capacity networks are likely to further reduce traffic/transit costs, while boosting speeds. That undercuts the business model of selling digital slow and fast lanes.

A construction crew accidentally severed a single fiber optic cable on Monday and wiped out TV, broadband, and phone service for Comcast customers in metropolitan Denver.

The outage began at 4:30pm and lasted until around midnight when service was restored. Customers reported problems across Denver, Aurora, and other surrounding areas.

In these circumstances, Comcast does not usually give automatic bill credits for service outages — customers have to request them. But the widespread outage triggered a press release from Comcast claiming service credits will be automatic for “affected customers:”

We appreciate everyone’s patience during yesterday’s service outage in the Denver area. We regret the impact to our customers and we want to make it right. We are conducting an investigation into the cause and full impact of the outage. Upon completion of the investigation and identification of the impacted residential customers, we will automatically apply credits to their accounts.

If you are still experiencing issues with your service please send your account number and a brief description to our customer care team by clicking here or connect with an agent by phone or chat here.

If you want to be certain about receiving a credit, contact Comcast directly and ask for one instead of waiting for them.

It’s the end of summer and that means it is time for the 11th annual Comcast Customer Service Makeover — the annual ritual of going through the motions of saying you are going to improve the customer experience, without actually doing so.

Since at least 2006, Comcast has promised it would get better, but somehow never does. That the cable company remains one of America’s most-hated companies 11 years after first promising to do better, evidently doesn’t faze J.D. Keller, the latest executive assigned to win customers over. At least Keller admits it will be a tough job to turn around one of the country’s greediest and nastiest companies. He likens it to “turning a ship around.” We’re not talking about a weekend pleasure craft either. We’re talking a colossal toxin-filled tanker here. That’s an appropriate vision of Comcast, where the craft of alienating customers with impenetrable offshore customer service and local cable stores complete with bulletproof glass to protect the employees from customers has been finely honed for years.

To paraphrase Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine, Comcast’s customer service experience is best summed up as: “We don’t care — we don’t have to. We’re the cable company.”

Somehow, Comcast has spent another $300 million of ratepayer’s money for a three-year “corporatewide push,” beginning in 2015, to fix the damage. Considering the company’s war-criminal-like reputation score has barely budged, one wonders if the $300 million was spent on a golden Band-Aid… that has since fallen off. Comcast’s bullet points of new wonderfulness doesn’t seem to impress:

• Comcast has opened eight Apple-style XFINITY retail stores in the Twin Cities, notes the Star Tribune. Have you ever been excited visiting your phone, gas, or mobile company store? Didn’t think so. Shiny and new doesn’t help if you are still standing in line for 30-60 minutes to swap out a cable box.
• Comcast has beefed up its call center staff. But many customers tell us that is more of the same S&M experience they get now from offshore call center representatives, who apparently delight in having their revenge against evil and annoying Americans. Comcast’s customer service representatives are excellent at reading scripts, but when you ask for credit or above-and-beyond help with a service problem, suddenly their English skills go missing. “Twice nothing is still nothing.”
• Comcast has put more technicians on the street. But they would not have to if their cable infrastructure wasn’t ineptly maintained in some areas of the country.
• Comcast has developed online tools so customers can fix problems themselves. That’s a slight improvement, if only because you don’t have to call for a verbal torture session with the Philippines call center. But in fact such tools benefit Comcast more than customers, because it cuts their costs.

Mr. Keller:

“When I interviewed with Steve White [Comcast’s West Division president] and CEO Dave Watson, all they talked about was customer experience. Dave Watson regularly calls clients deep in our organization to ask, ‘How’d we do?’ He’s out on the street listening to people. There is no ivory tower here. We have a long way to go to respect our customers and do a better job. Our goal is to be recognized by our customers and J.D. Power as the No. 1 communications company in the world. That’s what brought me to Comcast. A recent American Customer Satisfaction Index report gave Comcast its highest marks in 15 years [although it still trailed Verizon, AT&T and Charter Communications].”

Indeed, it trails among many, many, many, many, many other companies. What does “clients deep in our organization” mean, exactly? Comcast is calling itself? We also find it impossibly hard to believe a division president in manning a booth on the street asking random customers how they feel about Comcast. At least not without his bodyguard. Comcast is the very definition of an “ivory tower” corporation, completely out of touch with the wants and needs of its own customers. Want evidence? Junk fees, channel shoveling, data caps, offshore customer service, constant rate increases, tricky promotions, and those bullet-proof glass windows at the customer service center, for a start.

Every year, Comcast reminds customers it has a long way to go to repair its emotionally abusive relationship with customers, who feel trapped with a company many wish they could ditch once and for all. Like other tragic relationships gone bad, the promises that things will get better are often empty.

Keller’s out-of-touchness shines as he talks about “respecting our customers and their time.” Comcast commits to two-hour service windows, and claims they text or call 30 minutes ahead of let customers know when the truck will arrive. Customers tell us that is true in some places, but not in others. The arrival of a repair crew does not guarantee the problem will be adequately addressed during that call either. Many tell us they have to get several crews out before a problem is really fixed. Keller also claims Comcast reads all the feedback customers give the company, but doesn’t mention it routinely ignores most of that feedback. Otherwise, those constant annoyances and policies that gave the company its horrific reputation would have been dispensed with a decade ago.

“We believe if customers are happy with us in the first 90 days, they’re going to stay with us for life,” Keller said with a straight face, forgetting that many customers don’t have a choice. Swapping one cable company for another is about as common as choosing where you get your tap water. It’s Choice “A” or Choice “A.” You decide.

Keller suggests he thought long and hard before accepting a job at the most loathed cable company on the planet.

“I took the time to take a deep breath and spend time with my wife and three children,” Keller claimed. “I knew I wanted to challenge myself. I’m not happy unless there’s some big boulder I have to push up the hill.”

Somehow, and probably with the help of a generous compensation package, he got over his concerns.

There are two ways to deal with Comcast’s nightmarish reputation. Either blow it up and start a new relationship with customers or convince yourself that your poor reputation barely exists at all and is easily fixed. The latter is what Comcast’s annual exercise in “improving the customer experience” is all about. Define a problem as fixable, pretend to fix it, and next year tell customers you are making progress. After a decade, this annual ritual is now a tradition.

Until customers have adequate competitive options to send a real message Comcast cannot afford to ignore (“I and all my friends are canceling service”), expect more of the same.

Comcast is being sued for deceptively advertising cable packages at a low price, but actually charging much more because of compulsory “junk fees” that customers cannot avoid.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers Dan M. Hattis of Bellevue, Wash., and Jason Skaggs of Palo Alto, Calif., jointly brought the class action case against the cable company, asking a judge to force Comcast to stop charging the fees and return all of its “unjust profits” to impacted subscribers.

“Comcast promises to charge customers a fixed monthly price for the service plans, but in fact Comcast charges a much higher rate for those plans via concealed and deceptive ‘fees’ which Comcast intentionally disguises in both its advertising and in its customer bills,” the attorneys complain. “These illegal and deceptive fees, which Comcast calls the Broadcast TV Fee and the Regional Sports Fee, earn Comcast over $1 billion each year, accounting for approximately 15% of Comcast’s annual profits.”

But in fact Comcast’s bill padding goes well beyond its TV and sports programming surcharges. No other cable company has mastered the art of the surcharge and fee better than America’s largest cable operator. Consumer advocates in California complain those fees can now cost an average subscriber in that state more than $40 a month.

“Although Charter Communications and Cox — California’s other major cable operators — also charge many of these fees, Comcast pioneered most of them and charges more than any other cable operator,” claimed Geoff Nawasaki, a San Mateo resident that has filed complaints against Comcast for several years. “A class action lawsuit is long overdue.”

Once Comcast establishes a new fee or surcharge, the company often boosts those fees dramatically over a very short time. Vaughn Aubuchon has been tracking Comcast’s rates in the Monterey Bay area of central California since 2010 and has documented Comcast routinely increasing its junk fees by as much as 1,000%. But most regulators and members of Congress may not realize how much customer bills are increasing, because the rate card Comcast shares with Washington and the general public doesn’t typically include the extra fees.

Aubuchon has documented significant spikes in Comcast’s prices, even though the company is still promoting packages costing $79-89 a month for new customers. But once those customers open their first bill, the advertised price no longer matters.

Hattis and Skaggs’ 2016 lawsuit documents Comcast’s online order system making no mention of its mandatory surcharges and fees. In fact, even Comcast’s fine print fails to mention the exact amount customers will pay in surcharges. According to Comcast, you have to already be a Comcast customer to review your local rates.

Aubuchon’s rate tracking shows just how lucrative Comcast’s billing tactics have become to the cable operator, especially since 2014:

• XFINITY TV cost $80.94 in 2010. As of August, the rate is now $102.98 — more than $20 a month more.
• XFINITY INTERNET cost $47.95 including the $5 modem rental fee in 2010. Today, that price is $68.95 a month, and the modem rental fee has doubled. That’s another $20 more a month.
• Comcast now charges Aubuchon $6 a month for its Broadcast TV Surcharge and $5 a month for sports programming — an extra $11 month that wasn’t there in 2010.
• After adding up all the fees and surcharges, Aubuchon’s bill went from $135.58 in 2010 to $196.65 today — $62.23 more a month.

Aubuchon

Some of the biggest recent hidden rate hikes have come from Comcast’s Broadcast TV Fee and Regional Sports Fee.

“In the Sacramento area in July 2016, Comcast increased the Broadcast TV Fee by 54% from $3.25 to $5.00, and tripled the Regional Sports Fee from $1.00 to $3.00,” the lawsuit notes. “Then, just three months later in October 2016 Comcast increased the fees yet again to $6.50 for the Broadcast TV Fee and $4.50 for the Regional Sports Fee.”

“Comcast has admitted these invented fees are actually just price increases for broadcast channels and sports channels in its cable television packages,” the lawsuit claims. “But Comcast intentionally does not include the cost of these fees in its advertised or quoted rates for those channel packages, in order to mislead customers into thinking that they will pay less than Comcast will actually charge them.”

The plaintiffs also argue Comcast is intentionally deceptive to customers questioning the ballooning fees on their cable bills.

“Comcast staff and agents explicitly lie by stating that the Broadcast TV Fee and the Regional Sports Fee are government-related fees or taxes over which Comcast has no control.”

A Guide to Comcast’s Junk Bill-Padding Fees

• Broadcast TV Fee (up to $7.50): Ostensibly the cost of retransmission consent fees required to carry free, over the air stations on Comcast’s lineup. The amount varies depending on the fees paid in each local market, with a significant likelihood Comcast rounds those amounts up in ‘friendlier’ $0.25 increments. Introduced in 2014.
• Digital Adapter ($3.99): Originally $1.99/mo when introduced in 2014, the fee covers the rental of a basic set-top box to continue receiving Comcast’s encrypted digital cable TV service on older “cable-ready” analog televisions that did not require a cable box in the past.
• Gateway Rental ($10): This is the monthly rental fee for your cable modem, “gateway,” or Wi-Fi enabled router. You can buy your own equipment and avoid this fee. Recently, Comcast has offered customers a waiver of equipment charges if they upgrade to an X1 set-top box. But in practice the rental fees are stopped for your existing equipment only because Comcast has started charging rental fees for the new equipment it bundles with the upgrade.
• HD/DVR Rental Fees (up to $10 a month for equipment you cannot buy outright yourself).
• HD Technology Fee ($9.95): for viewing HD content on a set-top box you already pay up to $10 a month to use.
• Service Protection Plan ($5.99): Was $1.45 (or less) per month for years until Comcast started hiking the price five years ago. Went from $1.99 in early 2012 to $5.99 in August 2017. Many customers sign up out of fear they will be charged between $36.50-$70 for a home visit from a Comcast technician dealing with a service problem. In reality, all the Service Protection Plan covers for certain is inside wiring that does not travel within a wall and protection from in-home service call fees.
• Regional Sports Fee (up to $5): A way to pass on sports programming costs to every subscriber without boosting the published rate for cable television.

Comcast’s Service Protection Plan = “Service Call Extortion Insurance”

Comcast’s $5.99/month Service Protection Plan has been called “extortion insurance” by some customers who buy the plan to avoid Comcast’s notorious service charges for in-home service calls. Unlike many other cable companies, Comcast charges customers to visit their homes for any reason other than a true, company-caused service outage. A 2016 lawsuit in Washington alleged Comcast’s process for determining whether a service call is charged or free is subjective and frequently at the whim of the technician, who enters “fix codes” at the end of a service call. Some “fix codes” are free, others trigger service call visit fees. The lawsuit claims, “Comcast does not formally train the technicians on what each fix code means.”

Comcast customers that have faced the sting of an unwarranted service call charge often readily agree to Comcast’s sales push for its Service Protection Plan, which normally waives those fees. It doesn’t take much to trigger those fees. The Washington lawsuit noted that if a Comcast technician talks to the customer about how to use their DVR, program a remote control, reset their cable modem, or use Wi-Fi, it is considered “customer education,” which results in a service call charge.

“Thus, if a technician fixes a broken Comcast cable box but also provides ‘customer education’ during the service call, the customer will be charged for the service call if the technician applies the customer education code because customer education fix codes are chargeable,” the lawsuit said. “This occurred 2,078 times between 17 June 2014 and June 2016 [in Washington State].”

Customer education fees are waived for those who pay for Comcast’s Service Protection Plan.

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile are sending technicians to hundreds of cell sites across Florida to top off fuel generators, test back up batteries, and protect facilities from Hurricane Irma’s anticipated storm surge and associated flooding.

“Customers rely on us, especially during major storms,” said Joe York, AT&T Florida president. “That’s why we practice readiness drills and simulations throughout the year. We do all we can to have our networks prepared when severe weather strikes. We’ve worked for the past few days to position equipment and crews to respond to the storm. We’re closely linked with Florida public officials in their storm response efforts. With a storm of this size, we may have some outages. But if service goes down, we’ll do all we can to get it back up as fast as possible.”

With landfall possible along the Florida coast or inland, Verizon pointed out that in Florida, since last hurricane season, it has densified its network with 4G, fortified coverage along evacuation routes, put cell sites equipment on stilts and installed new systems in hospitals, government and emergency facilities, and high-traffic public areas.

“The country is only beginning to wrestle with recovery efforts from Harvey, and already, residents of Florida and the Caribbean are bracing for another potentially devastating storm in Hurricane Irma,” said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. “During times like these, the cost of staying connected to friends and loved ones should be the last thing on anyone’s mind, and we want to do what we can to support our customers across impacted areas.”

Hurricane Irma’s impact on Puerto Rico.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless are positioning portable cell tower trailers just outside of areas anticipated to take the brunt of the hurricane. AT&T in particular has a lot to prove as its network now includes FirstNet — a public private wireless broadband network for emergency responders that also depends on AT&T’s wireless networks. States are still in the process of opting in to AT&T’s FirstNet. The company has more than 700 pieces of emergency cellular equipment, including Cell on Wheels, Cell on Light Trucks, portable trailers and generators, and even the possibility of deploying Cells on Wings — airborne cell towers that can restore cell service in areas where roads are inaccessible because of floods.

Wireline companies are also positioning repair crews in the region to bring service back online. Other technicians are checking on emergency generator and battery backup power, particularly for maintaining landline service.

“Our team is working to prepare for extreme weather and will be there for our business and residential customers to quickly and safely restore any affected network services,” reports Frontier Communications, which provides service in former Verizon landline service areas.

The phone company is reminding landline customers that not all phones will operate during a power outage, but that does not mean Frontier’s landline network is down.

“Customers who rely on cordless phones should consider plugging a traditional corded phone directly into the wall. In the event of a commercial power outage, corded phones on the copper network will still operate; cordless ones will not,” the company says. “If commercial power is unavailable, generators and batteries in Frontier’s central offices serve as a backup. Phone lines generally will have enough power in them to use a corded phone. For customers using FiOS phone services, the battery backup will supply voice service for up to eight hours.”

The company also warns customers to watch out for damaged utility lines after the storm is over.

“Stay far away from any downed cables or power lines. Contact Frontier at 800-921-8102 (business) or 800-921-8101 (residential) to report any fallen telephone poles or cables.”

Some companies are offering customers a break on their bills:

• Verizon: Landline customers will not pay any long distance charges for calls to Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and the Turks and Caicos Islands from Sept. 6-9. Taxes and any government surcharges applicable will still apply. Verizon Wireless customers inside the U.S. will not be charged for texts or calls originating in the U.S. to those same countries and territories for the same period.
• T-Mobile and MetroPCS customers in affected areas of Puerto Rico:  Will get calls, texts, and unlimited data free from Sept. 6th through Sept. 8th. This free service will be available to customers in the 787 and 939 area codes.
• Sprint: Effective today through Sept. 9, 2017, Sprint will waive call, text and data overage fees for its Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile customers in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. For Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile customers in the U.S., the company will also waive all international call and text overage fees to the following: Anguilla, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Turks and Caicos, and British Virgin Islands. For the same period, Sprint will also waive roaming voice and text overage fees for its customers in those locations. Fees will be waived during the time specified.
• Comcast: Opening more than 137,000 XFINITY Wi-Fi hotspots throughout Florida to anyone who needs them, including non-XFINITY customers, for free. For a map of XFINITY Wi-Fi hotspots, which are located both indoors and outdoors in places such as shopping districts, parks and businesses, visit Xfinity.com/wifi. Once in range of a hotspot, select the “xfinitywifi” network name in the list of available hotspots and then launch a browser. Comcast internet customers can sign in with their usernames and passwords and they will be automatically connected to XFINITY Wi-Fi hotspots in the future. Non-Comcast internet subscribers should visit the “Not an Xfinity Internet Customer” section on the sign-in page to get started. Non-customers will be able to renew their complimentary sessions every 2 hours through Sept. 15, 2017.

AT&T Offers These Customer Tips:

• Keep your mobile phone battery charged. In case of a power outage, have another way to charge your phone like an extra battery, car charger or device-charging accessory. Applicable sales tax holidays are a great time to stock up on cell phone accessories.
• Keep your mobile devices dry. The biggest threat to your device during a hurricane is water.  Keep it safe from the elements by storing it in a baggie or some other type of protective covering, like an Otterbox phone cover.
• Have a family communications plan. Choose someone out of the area as a central contact.   Make sure all family members know who to contact if they get separated. Most importantly, practice your emergency plan in advance.
• Program all of your emergency contact numbers and e-mail addresses into your mobile phone. Numbers should include the police department, fire station and hospital, as well as your family members.
• Forward your home number to your mobile number in the event of an evacuation. Call forwarding is based out of the telephone central office. This means you will get calls from your landline phone even if your local telephone service is disrupted. If the central office is not operational, services such as voicemail and call forwarding may be useful.
• Track the storm and access weather information on your mobile device. Many homes lose power during severe weather. You can stay up to speed as a DIRECTV customer, by streaming local weather channels using the DIRECTV application on your smartphone. If you subscribe to mobile DVR, you can also stream every channel directly to your phone.
• Camera phones provide assistance. If you have a camera phone, take, store and send photos and video clips of damage to your insurance company.
• Use location-based technology.  Services like AT&T Navigator and AT&T FamilyMap can help you find evacuation routes or avoid traffic from downed trees or power lines. They can also track a family member’s wireless device if you get separated.
• Limit social media activity. Keep social media activity to a minimum during and after a storm to limit network congestion and allow for emergency communications to go through.

Business Tips:

• Set up a call-forwarding service to a backup location. Set up a single or multiple hotline number(s) for employees, their families, customers and partners so they all know about the business situation and emergency plan.
• Back up data to the Cloud. Routinely back up files to an off-site location.
• Outline detailed plans for evacuation and shelter-in-place. Practice these plans (employee training, etc.). Establish a backup location for your business and meeting place for all employees.
• Assemble a crisis-management team. Coordinate efforts with neighboring businesses and building management. Disasters that affect your suppliers also affect your business. Outline a plan for supply chain continuity for business needs.

Keeping the lines open for emergencies:

During evacuations, the storm event and its aftermath, network resources will likely be taxed. To help ensure that emergency personnel have open lines, keep these tips in mind:

• Text messaging. During an emergency situation, text messages may go through more quickly than voice calls because they require fewer network resources. Depending on your text or data plan, additional charges may apply.
• Be prepared for high call volume. During an emergency, many people are trying to use their phones at the same time. The increased calling volume may create network congestion, leading to “fast busy” signals on your wireless phone or a slow dial tone on your landline phone. If this happens, hang up, wait several seconds and then try the call again. This allows your original call data to clear the network before you try again.
• Keep non-emergency calls to a minimum, and limit your calls to the most important ones. If there is severe weather, chances are many people will be attempting to place calls to loved ones, friends and business associates.

Additional information and tips for disaster preparedness can be found at www.att.com/vitalconnections.