Martin

While thousands of West Virginians continue to struggle without any broadband service, the state government is having trouble finding a way to spend up to $40 million in broadband stimulus money on institutional broadband projects that often already have cutting edge fiber networks.

State officials won $126 million in federal stimulus grant money last year, from which the state announced it would lay more than 2,400 miles of fiber optic cable to wire government offices, schools, and libraries.  Now, a vocal critic says a combination of government waste, preferential treatment for the state’s largest phone company — Frontier Communications, and bad planning could leave up to $40 million of the grant money on the table, unspent for better broadband.

Jim Martin, president of business broadband provider Citynet, says the state overestimated the number of public facilities that need broadband improvements.  Many of the facilities involved already have high speed service, and do not require additional infrastructure.  As the grant expires, Martin says he would not be surprised if the state only managed to fund the installation of 300 miles of fiber.

Martin believes funds should be redirected to bolstering the state’s “middle mile” network — fiber infrastructure that would serve as an open network backbone to ensure capacity exists to support growing broadband demands in the state.  Instead, Martin told the Charleston Gazette, the state has been spending money providing fiber broadband to small libraries with fewer than a dozen computers that are unlikely to have the resources to pay the monthly fees Frontier Communications will charge for the service.

“There’s no value to any of this to anyone but Frontier,” Martin said.

In fact, Martin believes many of the current projects funded by taxpayer dollars deliver enormous benefits to Frontier’s bottom line, but only incremental improvement to some institutional users.

Martin claims Frontier has, in some cases, only spent enough money to install fiber from the pole to the building. That assures Frontier of being the only provider that can deliver ongoing service to institutional users.  Martin has a dog in this fight — his company competes with Frontier for business service contracts.

West Virginia's current broadband map shows large areas of the state have access to no broadband at all. (Olive color = No broadband.) (Click to enlarge)

Before the grant expires in February 2013, the state is hurrying to bolster its list of would-be recipients.

Jimmy Gianato, the state’s homeland security chief, said his office recently identified 330 additional “replacement locations” — higher education facilities, schools, health departments and state-owned hospitals — that could be eligible for the project, according to the newspaper.

Not on the list are individual consumers and small businesses who currently do not have access to any broadband service.  One of the ongoing problems of broadband stimulus funding is that public funds are often available to bolster broadband for state and locally-owned institutions, such as government offices, health care facilities, schools and libraries, but no funding to improve infrastructure for individual broadband service for “last mile” users.  This can result in Cadillac-style installations for small schools and libraries who win superb quality networks they ultimately cannot afford to operate on an ongoing basis.  For most, that service would come from Frontier Communications.

Martin already accused the state of investing in more than 1,000 routers without being certain if they were needed or where they would be installed.  At $20,000 each, Martin called the routers “Lamborghinis” and suggested they were largely unnecessary.

Nearly every week, phone companies like Frontier Communications are confronted with service outages that turn out to be more than just an errant gunshot that disrupted 911 service for hundreds of residents in Moses Lake, Washington.  When repair crews arrive to find no cabling to repair, they realize it’s yet another case of copper theft — a problem plaguing economically challenged areas across the country.

Unfortunately for phone companies, copper theft remains a misdemeanor in many states, including West Virginia, one of the hardest hit by wire thieves that literally strip phone lines right off the phone poles as they drive by in the dead of night.

Scrap copper wire

An employee with Frontier Communications reported that on June 25 he received reports that the phone lines were out for residents along Paddle Creek Road near Fort Gay, W.V.

It apparently took two days for the employee to discover, on June 27, 800 feet of phone cable had been removed from a wooded area along the road. The value of the cable was estimated at $10,000.  The annoyance value for customers left without basic phone service?  Potentially more.

In St. Albans, nearly 400 Frontier customers were stripped of their landline service Friday when vandals cut a cable in a possible theft attempt.  Frontier said the most vulnerable cables are often in the most remote and rural locations, and this cable qualified, requiring more than a day to repair and restore service.

But the impact of copper theft can be greater than phone service knocked out for a few hundred residents.  In Kanawha County, West Virginia’s Department of Agriculture offices were left idle when the second copper theft in two months left their phone lines dead.

“We’re at a standstill,” said Gus Douglass, commissioner of agriculture. “It’s kind of ridiculous.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSAZ Huntington Copper Thieves Dep Ag 6-28-11.mp4[/flv]

WSAZ-TV in Huntington, W.V. covered the second straight outage of phone service for the West Virginia Dept. of Agriculture in two months.  Copper thieves do strike twice in the same place.  (2 minutes)

Frontier has complained that because copper thefts are often treated as a misdemeanor, offenders are skating with a small fine and little or no jail time.  That makes repeat offenses likely, and risks for those just getting into the copper racket low.

Thieves are reselling the stolen copper for money.  Copper has become a hot commodity, and thieves often earn hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, for a night’s work.

Frontier believes strengthening criminal penalties for copper thefts will do more to deter would-be thieves more than installing surveillance equipment.

Kanawha County Prosecutor Mark Plants seems to agree.  His office is now charging offenders under a little-used state code that makes it a felony to disrupt telephone service.  A felony conviction can bring substantial fines and multi-year prison sentences, especially for repeat offenders.

“There is a push […] towards maximizing a prison sentence for all of these criminals,” Plants told WSAZ-TV.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSAZ Huntington Copper Thieves 6-29-11.mp4[/flv]

WSAZ-TV follows up on the copper theft outage that plagued the West Virginia Dept. of Agriculture with news of an arrest, and a demand for stronger penalties for copper thieves.  (2 minutes)

Frontier's Facts - Frontier's new website to counter Comcast's claims about FiOS. (click to enlarge)

Frontier Communications has fired back at Comcast after the Fort Wayne, Indiana cable company erected billboards telling residents Frontier was pulling the plug on its acquired FiOS fiber optic network.

On Wednesday, Frontier purchased a full-page ad in The Journal Gazette headlined, “Comcast Doesn’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story! Here’s the Truth: Frontier Isn’t Pulling the Plug on Anything.”  It also launched a new website — Frontier Facts — telling customers it is not “pulling the plug” on any of its services.

Roscoe Spencer, Frontier’s local general manager, tells customers:

Recently, one of our competitors put up billboards, placed inserts in the newspapers and sent mailings to customers indicating we had pulled the plug on FiOS. This statement is simply not true, and we have taken legal action to insist that these false claims be stopped immediately.

Spencer

The spat began when Comcast began trying to recruit disaffected Frontier TV customers who found a massive rate increase notice in bills sent earlier this year.  Frontier blamed the rate increase on the loss of volume discounts former owner Verizon obtained for its FiOS TV service for television programming.  Frontier has sought to negotiate with programmers directly instead of working through a cooperative buying group, so the prices it pays for popular cable networks are much higher than what Comcast pays for a comparable video package.

Frontier watchers suggest the company is well aware its new video pricing is uncompetitive and customers will take their business elsewhere.  Frontier quickly began marketing DirecTV, a satellite provider, as a suitable replacement for those unhappy with the rate increase.  But Comcast also saw an opportunity to pick up new customers at the phone company’s expense, including through the use of billboards Frontier claims are misleading.

Frontier stresses its FiOS platform will continue to provide telephone, television, and broadband service, despite what Comcast’s billboards might suggest.

Despite the involvement of attorneys, Comcast has continued to thumb its nose at Frontier’s legal department.  Frontier spokesman Matt Kelley told the Journal Gazette Comcast was supposed to remove the billboards by Monday of this week, but they remain in place.

The cable company calls it a case of old fashioned competition.

Stop the Cap! reader Kevin calls Frontier’s marketing to get customers to drop FiOS TV for DirecTV a real blast from the past.

“It remains difficult for Frontier to sell people on its advanced fiber network when it is heavily marketing customers to get off of it and switch to DirecTV, a service that looked ultra-modern in the 1990s but today is just a rain-faded, pixellated nuisance,” Kevin says.  “Frontier blew it, Comcast took advantage of their strategic blunders, and now the whining has begun.”

Kevin is a former Verizon FiOS customer who was switched to Frontier when Verizon exited Fort Wayne.

“Verizon knew what they were doing, but eventually decided a few small cities in Indiana were not worth their time or interest, so they sold us off to Frontier, who ended up with a fiber network they’ve shown little interest in running except as an adopted curiosity,” Kevin adds.  “When we got notice of the rate increase, we canceled the TV service and now watch over the air television for free, supplemented with Netflix and Hulu.”

Kevin says Frontier ultimately did him a favor, discovering he was fine without a pay television package.

“Outside of breaking news and sports, you can get most everything else online.  Why pay more?”

Click to Enlarge

Frontier Communications’ DSL service delivers abysmal results for customers looking for quality time with Netflix.  For the second quarter running, the independent phone company’s ability to keep up with Netflix’s high quality video is about on par with a garden slug in a triathlon — yes, it may eventually reach the finish line, but you’ll be dead before it happens.  Even more embarrassing for Frontier, their service is occasionally beaten by Clearwire, a wireless ISP with a bandwidth throttler that can reduce your online experience to the painful days of dial-up if deemed to be using “too much.”

“Frontier sucks,” writes Stop the Cap! reader Doug in Charleston, W.V. “After they took over where Verizon fled, my ability to watch Netflix online became a source of endless frustration, so now I limit myself to mailing DVD’s back and forth.”

Remarkably, Charter Cable, which does poorly in customer satisfaction surveys, is again the runaway winner, followed by Comcast, the heavily usage-capped Cable One, Time Warner Cable, and Cox.  Verizon and AT&T only deliver middling performance.

Billboards sprinkled across Ft. Wayne, Ind., telling residents, “Frontier is pulling the plug on FiOS — Switch to Xfinity,” has infuriated Frontier Communications, who says it will continue to provide FiOS service in the area, at least for broadband, indefinitely.  Now the independent phone company has sent a “cease and desist” letter to Comcast officials demanding the billboards come down.

Frontier spokesman Matt Kelley accused Comcast of spreading false rumors in an effort to drum up business.

“Frontier is not planning on pulling the plug,” Kelly told WANE-TV. “We are going to continue providing FiOS service in Allen County and we have no plans to remove it.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WANE Ft Wayne FiOS Not Going Away 6-9-11.mp4[/flv]

WANE-TV in Ft. Wayne led its newscast with the dispute between Frontier Communications and Comcast over fiber optic television.  Is the plug really being pulled? (Loud Volume Alert!) (3 minutes)

But Comcast officials note Frontier has been pushing existing customers hard to switch to satellite television service, and Frontier earlier announced dramatic rate increases for its fiber cable television service — rates much higher than other competitors.

Comcast issued a statement about the dispute:

“Comcast continues to invest in these markets, while Frontier has taken a number of steps to discourage new customers from signing up for its service and encourage current customers to seek alternative services from satellite. We are using these ads to make consumers aware of our Xfinity TV service as a better choice for consumers.”

HissyFitWatch: Oooh... Comcast!

From our own Stop the Cap! investigation, both companies are partly correct.

We called Frontier this afternoon posing as a new FiOS customer in Ft. Wayne trying to sign up for television service.  The only option available, we were told, was satellite television service.  While Frontier was happy to sign us up for telephone and fiber broadband, the company representative told us she could not take our order for FiOS TV because, “it’s not available in your area.”

But Comcast’s claims about FiOS lack the very important detail that FiOS broadband and phone service will be offered by Frontier without any interruption — only television service appears to be at issue, and remains available to current customers.

We heard from several Ft. Wayne customers who are unhappy with Frontier’s handling of FiOS.

“While Comcast is being clever, the fact is Frontier wants TV customers to switch to satellite, which is simply a stupid idea,” says our reader Kevin.  “Why would I want a satellite dish when I have fiber.”

Lee, another Frontier customer, believes the company broke its promise of no rate increases after buying out Verizon’s local operations.

“They promptly raised the TV rate by around $30, and if you are a new FiOS customer, expect to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for installation,” he says.

Last week, Frontier’s deadline for Comcast to pull down the billboards passed, but as of today those billboards are still on full display.  Comcast’s response to Frontier?

“We received their letter.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WANE Ft Wayne Deadline day for billboard back-and-forth 6-17-11.mp4[/flv]

WANE-TV in Ft. Wayne updates viewers.  Frontier’s unilateral deadline for Comcast to pull down their billboards came and went.  The billboards are still there.  Now what? (2 minutes)