Cablevision is using contract workers that have subsequently been accused of sexual assault and theft during service calls.

Last week, a Stony Point, N.Y., subcontractor handling repairs on behalf of the cable company was charged with a misdemeanor sex crime, after allegedly kissing and touching a Cablevision customer without her consent.

Jonathan Malave, 29, of Belleville, N.J., was charged after Stony Point police investigated a complaint filed by a woman in her 20s who claimed Malave made sexual advances while she was home alone.

Malave

Lt. Keith Williams told The Journal News Malave was there to repair the woman’s cable modem, but instead allegedly made unwanted advances towards the woman, first kissing and then reaching down and touching her.

Malave quickly left the customer’s home after the incident without making the repairs and the woman called police.  Malave was picked up by Stony Point authorities within hours, charged with inappropriate touching, and is expected to appear and answer the charges in Town Court on May 15.

This is not Cablevision’s first problem with subcontractors.

In late January, a South Salem, N.Y. customer reported that nearly $100 in change was stolen from her home while a Cablevision technician was there to repair cable-TV wiring.

The customer said the only individual with access to the money, other than herself, was the Cablevision worker.  Lewisboro police later learned the employee hadn’t directly worked for Cablevision, but was in fact a subcontractor working on behalf of the company. Individuals who are also facing similar charges should hire a criminal defence lawyer to ensure their rights are protected. In cases of assault and battery, make sure to contact battery attorneys. You may consult the experts from criminal law Schaumburg for professional legal services. You should also learn how to remove mugshots online if you have a criminal record and mugshot you want to expunge from the internet.

Cable companies increasingly rely on subcontractors to perform basic installation and repair work, and some critics say lax hiring standards can present a risk to customers.

But Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella told the newspaper, “We take the safety and security of our customers very seriously. We are investigating the matter fully and cooperating with authorities.”

The editor of Fierce Cable believes Cablevision should focus more on protecting subscribers than contractors:

Cablevision refuses to name the contractor that employs him. The company also declined to comment when asked if it performs background checks on employees who visit subscriber homes.

[…] Cablevision may resist detailing the names of its technology suppliers for competitive reasons, but there is no legitimate reason to refuse to share the names of companies it hires to visit subscriber homes. It’s also not unreasonable for Cablevision to share information about whether or not it investigates if an employee has a criminal record before he is allowed to enter the home of one of its subscribers.

[…] Cablevision could better protect its subscribers, and it could also perform a service for its fellow cable MSOs, if it were to disclose the name of the contractor.

Cogeco Cable is cracking down on customers who shop around for a better deal.

After dumping its money-losing Portuguese Cabovisao operation earlier this year, the company is looking to recoup its losses, and Canadian consumers are paying the price.

Chief Executive Louis Audet told investors Cogeco has tightened up promotions, giveaways, and credit standards to weed out bargain hunters and those who ultimately never pay their cable bill.

“If somebody else wants these undesirable customers, they’re theirs for the taking,” Audet said. “There’s too many promotion hoppers out there who are jumping from one supplier to the other.”

Audet

At least 9,000 customers left Cogeco during the second quarter, but that did nothing to hurt Cogeco’s bottom line.  Profits nearly quadrupled to $81.5 million according to Audet, but much of that is due to changes in accounting related to its sold-off Portuguese operation. Closer to home, Cogeco revenue inside Canada grew 12.4% from one year ago to $345.6 million.

Cogeco bought Televisao in 2006 for $465 million.  It sold it in February for just over $59 million.

Cogeco Cable, which serves subscribers in smaller cities and suburbs in Ontario and Quebec, is Canada’s fourth largest cable operator with more than 875,000 cable subscribers. Its biggest competitors are Bell (in Ontario and Quebec) and Telus, which has some landline operations on the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Quebec.

Most of Cogeco’s promotions and retention offers appeal to customers threatening to take their business to the phone companies. But Audet signaled the promotional pricing had become so aggressive, some customers have learned to bounce back and forth between providers to maintain lower pricing indefinitely.

By tightening up customer promotions, Audet said, the company can achieve a “stable” customer base that pays regular Cogeco prices.

Hastings vents on his Facebook page.

As Stop the Cap! has warned Netflix for years, Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, usage-based billing, and speed throttles represent an end run around Net Neutrality. If a provider cannot openly discriminate against the competition, slapping usage limits on them (while exempting favored services from that cap) can eventually accomplish the same thing.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings is finally getting the message after a frustrating weekend watching his Comcast usage allowance bleed away while streaming video.  He shared his views on his Facebook page:

Comcast [is] no longer following net neutrality principles.

Comcast should apply caps equally, or not at all.

I spent the weekend enjoying four good internet video apps on my Xbox: Netflix, HBO GO, Xfinity, and Hulu.

When I watch video on my Xbox from three of these four apps, it counts against my Comcast internet cap. When I watch through Comcast’s Xfinity app, however, it does not count against my Comcast internet cap.

For example, if I watch last night’s SNL episode on my Xbox through the Hulu app, it eats up about one gigabyte of my cap, but if I watch that same episode through the Xfinity Xbox app, it doesn’t use up my cap at all.

The same device, the same IP address, the same wifi, the same internet connection, but totally different cap treatment.

In what way is this neutral?

Comcast says it is “neutral” by framing its own Xbox-streamed video as a “set top box replacement,” even though the video that flows to the Xbox console travels down the same last-mile network Comcast says it needs to “protect” with its 250GB monthly usage cap.

Comcast doesn’t actually need a 250GB usage cap, particularly after the company upgraded its broadband facilities to DOCSIS 3 technology.  That vast improvement in capacity at a comparatively low cost (easily recouped by the company’s latest round of rate increases) should be shared with customers.  Instead of “applying caps equally,” Comcast should abandon them altogether.

[Thanks to Earl, one of our regular readers, for sharing the story.]

Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications have teamed up to sell both companies’ products to their respective customers, sweetened with a $200 rebate card offer.

The collaboration comes well before the federal government approves a wireless spectrum transfer between the cable operator and Verizon Wireless.  Both companies are under scrutiny in Washington for potentially anti-competitive behavior associated with the joint marketing agreement.

Today Time Warner Cable launched the new promotion in Raleigh, N.C., Kansas City, and three cities in Ohio — Cincinnati, Columbus, and Toledo.  Time Warner expects to expand the offer to other cities later this year.

To qualify for the gift card, customers must activate a new two year contract with a Verizon smartphone or tablet (with data service) and choose either a qualifying new service or upgrade to your Time Warner Cable account.  You must agree to keep the service active for at least 90 days.

As AT&T joins Verizon selling off its Yellow Pages publishing unit and payphones keep disappearing from street corners, the media is writing the landline obituary once again.

CNN Money asks today whether we’re witnessing the death of the landline.

In as little as 20 years, the concept of a wired phone line may become the novelty a rotary-dial phone represents today.  Yes, traditional phone lines will still be found in businesses and in the homes of those uncomfortable dealing with a mobile phone, but America’s largest phone companies are well aware the traditional telephone line is in decline.

[flv width=”412″ height=”330″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ATT Archives What is the Bell System.flv[/flv]

The Bell System, as it was known until the 1980s, used to comprise AT&T, Bell Labs, Western Electric, Long Lines, and two dozen local “operating companies” like New York Telephone, Mountain Bell, etc.  This AT&T documentary, from 1976, explores how “the phone company” used to function.  New innovations like “lightwave” are showcased, promising to deliver voice phone calls over glass fibers one day.  

Much of the technology seen in the documentary may be unfamiliar if you are under 30 (and check out how customer records were maintained back then), but those who remember renting telephones in garish colors from your local phone company will recognize the phones that occupied space in your home not that long ago.  The only part of the landline network that hasn’t changed much in the last 40 years is the wiring infrastructure itself, which has been allowed to deteriorate as customers continue to depart.

Why was the company so darn big back then?  Because it had to be, the documentary says, to serve a big America.  Hilariously, the company defends its then-status as a “regulated monopoly” telling viewers “[a] regulated monopoly works well in communications because you don’t duplicate facilities and you produce real economies over the long haul.”  (14 minutes)

CNN reports nearly one-third of all American homes no longer have landline service, double the rate from 2008, triple that of 2007.  Verizon is feeling the heat the most, with revenue down 19% over the last five years.  AT&T has seen their revenue drop 16.5% over the same period.

But things are not all bad for phone companies willing to spend money upgrading their networks.  Verizon’s top-rated FiOS fiber to the home service is a compelling competitor to Comcast and Time Warner Cable.  AT&T’s U-verse has gotten a respectable market share larger midwestern cities and draws customers who like its DVR box and the chance to stick it to the local cable company they’ve hated for years.

But where both companies have decided against investing in upgrades — notably in their rural service areas — the traditional phone line is trapped in time.  Only the network it depends on is changing, and not for the better.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ATT 1993-1994 You Will Ad Campaign Compilation.flv[/flv]

Back in 1993, AT&T produced seven advertisements dubbed the “You Will” series, showcasing future technologies AT&T would “deliver to you.”  Eerily, the vast majority of these predictions came true, but mostly from companies other than AT&T.  While the phone company predicted what would eventually become E-ZPass, Apple’s iPad, Apple’s Siri, the smartphone, Skype, Amazon’s Kindle, the cable industry’s home security apps, video on demand, and GPS navigation, most of those innovations were developed and sold by others.  

AT&T spun away Bell Labs and became preoccupied selling Internet access, cell phones and reassembling itself into its former ‘hugeness’ through mergers and buyouts. With limited investment in innovation, AT&T risks being left as a “dumb pipe” provider, selling the connectivity (among many others) to allow other companies’ devices to communicate. (Alert: Loud Volume at around 2 minutes) (4 minutes)

Verizon decided to ditch its rural service areas to FairPoint Communications in northern New England and Frontier Communications in 14 other states.  The results have not been good for the buyers (and often customers).  FairPoint went bankrupt in 2009, overwhelmed by the debt it incurred buying phone lines in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.  Frontier has watched its sales fall ever since its own landline acquisition, and the company has gotten scores of complaints from ex-Verizon customers about broken promises for improved broadband, billing errors, and poor service.

Analysts predict AT&T will start dumping its rural landline customers in the near future as well, letting the company focus on its U-verse service areas.  But who will buy these cast-offs?  CNN reports nobody knows.  CenturyLink and Windstream, two major independent phone companies, don’t appear to be in the mood to acquire neglected landline facilities they will need to spend millions to repair and upgrade.

One thing is certain — both AT&T and Verizon are tailoring business plans to favor Wall Street approval.  The companies’ decisions to temporarily boost revenue selling pieces of its operations has helped stock prices, but has also made the companies shadows of their former selves.  Nearly 30 years ago, customers still paid the phone company to rent their home telephones, relied extensively on the companies’ lucrative White and Yellow Pages for directory information, and discovered new technology innovations like digital switching thanks to Bell Labs, the research arm of AT&T — today independent and known as Alcatel-Lucent.  Today, people in some cities cannot even find a telephone company-owned payphone.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WJBK Detroit Quest to Find a Working Pay Phone 4-10-12.mp4[/flv]

WJBK in Detroit this week ventured out across Detroit to see if they could find a pay phone that actually works.  That old phone booth on the corner is long gone, and some admit they haven’t touched a pay phone in 20 years.  (2 minutes)