(image: Ryan Singel)

Comcast has begun presenting intrusive advertising messages to users connected to any of its 3.5 million Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide, most hosted by customers paying more than $8 a month in leasing and electricity costs to provide a home for the company’s wireless gateways.

A Comcast spokesman confirmed to Ars Technica that Comcast began its ad insertions several months ago, ostensibly to alert users they are connected to an official Comcast Wi-Fi hotspot. But users report the company’s advertising messages go well beyond that, appearing about every seven minutes on every web page a customer visits. Some promote Comcast products and services, others invite customers to download the cable company’s apps. For now, they only appear on Comcast’s guest Wi-Fi network.

“We think it’s a courtesy, and it helps address some concerns that people might not be absolutely sure they’re on a hotspot from Comcast,” Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas told Ars.

The most common ad seems to be a small banner dubbed “XFINITY Wi-Fi Peppy,” which can be closed by a user or eventually disappears on its own.

Although the ads are generally not exceptionally intrusive, often scooting across the bottom of web pages before disappearing, they are controversial because Comcast is injecting the advertising code into a third party’s website without permission.

Comcast is relying on JavaScript to insert its advertising and that has security experts concerned.

Seth Schoen, the senior staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars the interaction of Comcast’s JavaScript with websites could “create” security vulnerabilities in websites.

“Their code, or the interaction of code with other things, could potentially create new security vulnerabilities in sites that didn’t have them,” Schoen said in a telephone interview.

Dan Kaminsky added that Comcast’s JavaScript injection has the potential to break “all sorts of stuff, in that you no longer know as a website developer precisely what code is running in browsers out there. You didn’t send it, but your customers received it.”

Although Comcast is now using its ad insertion technology only to promote its own products and services, nothing legally precludes Comcast from selling ads it could insert on any web page it wishes. Current law doesn’t give the Federal Communications Commission authority to stop the practice. Only strong Net Neutrality protections made possible by a redefinition of broadband as a communications service would grant the FCC regulatory authority to forbid Internet providers from interfering with the integrity of third-party websites.

Money for some

Time Warner Cable will pay $416 million in retention bonuses to the company’s top and middle management to entice them to stay with the cable company as its merger deal with Comcast is scrutinized by regulators.

The bulk of the bonuses will be paid to the company’s top executives in New York, but an additional 1,800 middle management employees would also receive twice their regularly scheduled annual equity award to compensate for canceled awards in 2015 and 2016. About 15,000 rank and file employees eligible to participate in Time Warner’s supplemental bonus program will receive a much smaller bonus — averaging less than $70 per employee.

While upper level management will gorge on cash and stock, middle management will receive stock only. Rank and file employees will receive a token payout amounting to 50 percent of their target bonus for 2014. Recipients may want to save the money. As part of Comcast’s plans to realize cost savings from the merger, many employees of Time Warner Cable’s call centers and technical staff may not have a future paycheck at all if the merger is approved. Comcast relies heavily on existing offshore call centers for customer service and subcontracts a significant percentage of engineering and service call work to third-party subcontractors.

Among the top recipients of the largesse:

• Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus, who will receive a golden parachute package worth $81.8 million in cash, restricted stock and stock options. Because his compensation package is so large, Time Warner Cable has also agreed to pay an extra $300,000 to allow Marcus to hire his own financial planning firm to manage the enormous sums involved;
• The other top five executives of Time Warner Cable in New York will share more than $136 million in golden parachute compensation. They will have to figure out how to spend the money on their own.

Independent television in Great Britain may soon be in the hands of U.S. citizen John Malone, former cable magnate and head of the giant Liberty Global cable and entertainment conglomerate that has swept across western Europe through a series of mergers and buyouts.

Deregulation has allowed the prospect of Britain’s biggest independent network, dwarfed only by the BBC, to soon be owned lock, stock, and barrel by Americans.

U.S. media conglomerates have already picked up the smaller Channel 5 network, purchased by Viacom in a surprise $757 million deal.

ITV produces an enormous number of television shows for its network of regional independent television stations across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It is these productions that are attracting attention from content-hungry U.S. media companies.

John Malone’s Liberty Global is seen as a leading contender, already owning a 6.4% stake in ITV acquired from BSkyB for $824 million. Liberty Global and Discovery Networks have maintained close association and jointly bid $930 million to acquire All3Media, the production arm of reality shows like “Undercover Boss.”

ITV’s own needs for programming have increased dramatically with the introduction of digital free-to-air television across the United Kingdom. ITV’s single network, operating for decades, is today accompanied by ITV 2, 3, 4, Citv, and Encore.

Malone hopes to build a European media empire, and has amassed holdings including a takeover of Virgin Media and cable systems in Germany and the Benelux region.

Malone has wooed some of ITV’s biggest investors — all American — including Fidelity, which has a nearly an 8% stake, BlackRock, with 4.9%, and the California hedge fund manager Brandes, which has 4.8%.

Malone may face other bidders, however, notably Comcast-NBCUniversal, which has not yet publicly revealed whether it is interested or not.

Another potential benefit of the transaction would be to allow its American buyer to avoid U.S. taxes by relocating their corporate headquarters to Great Britain in a controversial practice known as tax-inversion.

Zoom Telephonics, a major manufacturer of cable modems, has asked the FCC to deny the sale of certain customers to Charter Communications as a result of the merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable because Charter enforces an unfair customer-owned cable modem policy.

For the last two years, Charter has not allowed customers switching to New Package Pricing to use their own cable modem. They must get one from Charter. But three days before the FCC closed the comment window on the Time Warner Cable-Comcast-Charter transaction, Charter suddenly reversed course and invited customers to attach their own cable modems to the network, as long as the modem was approved by Charter.

As one might expect, no modem from Zoom appears on Charter’s approved modem list.

Instead, Charter has approved 17 modems that are not available from conventional retailers and lack 802.11ac wireless capability.

Charter has still not adopted certification standards that are open to Zoom and other cable modem producers, complains Zoom, nor has Charter yet made a commitment for timely certifications under this program.

“We support the customer-owned cable modem programs available from Comcast and Time Warner Cable,” said Frank Manning, Zoom’s president and CEO. “We have urged Charter to adopt a similar program, but so far Charter has declined. Our request is timely because Charter will significantly increase its number of customers if the transaction involving Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Charter goes through. In that event Charter will go from fourth to second place on the list of largest U.S. cable Internet providers.”

Zoom also complains that Charter still does not separately list the cost of its leased modems on customer bills, and Charter does not offer a corresponding savings to all customers who buy a qualified cable modem and attach it to the Charter network.

Charter Approved Modems for All Internet Tiers

Modems Approved for Speeds Up to 60Mbps

Emanuel

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been prominently cited by Comcast as an example of a U.S. mayor that has the insight to support the company’s $45 billion buyout of Time Warner Cable.

But Comcast also had the insight to avoid mentioning it had paid Emanuel and a political slush fund controlled by him more than $100,000 before Emanuel took pen to paper in support of the merger.

The International Business Times notes the mayor of the Windy City has deposited giant campaign contributions from Comcast and its top executives for years, including two signed by the author of Comcast’s press release thanking Emanuel for his support himself — executive vice president David Cohen. In addition to a $5,000 personal donation to Emanuel, Cohen also signed a check for $10,000 payable to the notorious Chicago Committee, a political slush fund Emanuel controls and uses to keep other local politicians in line with his agenda.

Since Emanuel first ran for mayor in 2010, Comcast and its executives have spent $50,000 on his campaign. When Emanuel was a congressman, Comcast was one of his top donors — spending $46,000 total from 2003 until 2o08. Other executives gave another $25,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that Emanuel chaired at the time.

With that kind of generosity, Emanuel had no trouble signing one of Comcast’s “template” letters in support of the merger, telling the FCC it was great for Chicago and would enhance Comcast’s “generous presence” in the area. While generous to Emanuel and other politicians, Comcast has pounded Chicago residents with relentless rate increases and perennially receives dismal customer approval ratings from locals.

Although Emanuel’s letter told the FCC the merger would not reduce choice, elevate prices, or otherwise harm consumers, piles of Comcast’s cash may have obscured Emanuel’s vision of what ordinary Comcast customers endure. WLS-TV in Chicago reports Comcast’s customer service borders on “abusive.” (1:38)