Canadians overwhelmingly rate their mobile phone providers poor for value, telling Consumer Reports they are paying too much and getting far too little coverage and service in return.

The 2011 Consumer Reports Wireless Survey (subscription required) shows Canada’s largest cell companies are generally awful in the estimation of 15,000 Canadians polled for the survey.  At the very bottom of the barrel are mega-carriers Bell Mobility and Rogers, both rated lousy for service and customer support.

“You can always do better than Rogers and Bell, no matter what other carrier you can think of,” says Thierry Duluis, a Stop the Cap! reader in Quebec. “Biggest does not mean best.”

Consumer Reports agrees.  It top-rated Koodo, a no-contract carrier owned and operated by western Canada’s phone company Telus.  Koodo is a relatively new player, only launching service in 2008, but has since built a reputation for lower prices and reasonably good service to the majority of populated regions across Canada.  But Koodo’s data plans can be expensive and confusing.  A $5 data starter plan delivers 25MB of data, and automatically increments: 26MB-100MB = $10, 101MB-300MB = $15, 301MB-1GB = $20, 1.01GB–3GB = $30, + 2¢/MB above 3GB.  A alternative plan with a 2GB data allowance runs $25 a month with a 2¢/MB overlimit fee.

Consumer Reports

Ironically, several wireless brands owned by large Canadian phone and cable companies scored higher than their respective owners.  Koodo scored higher than Telus Mobility.  So did Fido, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rogers.

Regional SaskTel, which operates in Saskatchewan, received an admirable rating from the consumer magazine, primarily because of its slightly better customer service.  But no carrier, prepaid or postpaid, did extremely well across all categories.  Canadians are frustrated by cell phone prices that are often higher than what their American neighbors pay, and are often accompanied with stingy usage allowances.

Mediacom is announcing broad price increases for many of its customers scheduled to take effect on Dec. 15.  Most cable-TV subscribers will pay $2-3 more a month for basic cable, an additional $2 a month for Cinemax and Showtime, and $2 extra a month for “Digital Plus” cable service.  To add insult, the paperless bill credit that used to knock $1 off your bill if you chose not to receive a mailed billing statement is also being eliminated.

Lee Grassley, Mediacom’s chief lobbyist, delivered the company line about the rate increase in letters mailed to subscribers.  In essence, he blamed everyone but Mediacom for the rate hikes, and in poetic language one normally doesn’t get from a cable company rate increase notification:

As our nation struggles to pull itself out of what has been called the Great Recession, we recognize that these are challenging times for the hardworking men and women living in the communities that we serve.

[…] Over the past few years, many broadcasters have used their monopoly powers to demand 100%, 200% and even 300% rate increases during contract negotiations.  This has driven up cable and satellite rates and forced American consumers to pay billions of dollars for “free” over-the-air television.

The problems with sports programming are equally alarming.  One look at the skyrocketing rights fees announced with recent deals and it is easy to see that the marketplace for live televised sports is out of control.

[…] Contrary to public perception, cable companies are reluctant to raise video prices because when we do, we lose subscribers.  Mediacom does not make money when we raise video rates, since we remit virtually every penny of the increase on to programmers.  In fact, over the last three years, our programming cost increases were more than double our video revenue increases.

Since the programming community has been unwilling to exercise even the slightest measure of self-restraint when it comes to reigning in their spending or increasing their price demands, Mediacom has taken the fight to Washington.

Mediacom as new-found-friend fighting for lower cable rates comes across as ironic, at best, to Stop the Cap! reader Noel, who lives in Mediacom’s Iowa footprint.

“This is the same cable company who pocketed rate increases annually for as long as I’ve been a subscriber, and if they can’t raise the price of the television service, they’ll just make it up on the broadband side,” Noel writes.  “They have their nerve complaining about monopolies.”

Noel points out the local station retransmission consent fees are a more recent phenomenon, and Mediacom rate increases in prior years were the same or higher.

“I think they are realizing there is an absolute maximum people in Iowa can afford for cable, and years of rate increases have allowed all of the players to assume they can slice a bigger piece from that pie for themselves, and we’re tapped out,” Noel adds.

Noel called Mediacom and threatened to cancel service and received a nice consolation price: customer retention pricing normally reserved for new customers.

“I have a year reprieve, but rest assured I will start dropping things after the deal expires at these prices.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCCI Des Moines Mediacom Rate Increases 11-28-11.flv[/flv]

KCCI in Des Moines covers Mediacom’s rate increases and the reaction from local residents who will have to pay more for cable service.  (2 minutes)

Esteves

Time Warner Cable wants to introduce usage-based broadband pricing for its residential customers, according to the company’s chief financial officer.

Irene Esteves told investors attending a UBS media investor conference the cable company sees broadband usage as a “complement to our TV offering,” but reassured Wall Street Time Warner has a “wonderful hedge” against the cord-cutting customer: usage-based pricing.

Esteves believes usage-based pricing for Time Warner Cable broadband will become a reality sooner or later.  Charging “heavy users” more would already be familiar to consumers used to paying higher prices for heavy use of other services, and she claimed light users would have the option of paying less.

But despite favorable reception to the idea of usage pricing by Wall Street, Esteves acknowledged the company’s past experiments in usage pricing didn’t go as planned, and she suggested the company will introduce usage pricing “the right way rather than quickly.”

Esteves’ view of broadband pricing echoes that of Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, who in 2009 approved an experimental pricing scheme that raised the price for flat-rate broadband to a whopping $150 a month.  The plan was shelved by Britt less than two weeks after it was announced because of consumer backlash and political pressure.

Time Warner Cable was the loudest proponent of usage pricing at the investor event.  Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis told the same conference while the company wasn’t opposed to the concept of charging customers for usage, he saw no immediate need to “nickel and dime customers” for broadband service.

Critics of usage pricing point to the enormous profits cable companies earn from existing flat-rate broadband service.  One Wall Street analyst says cable operators already collect a 95% profit margin on unlimited service, and Comcast pays costs of around $8 a month for broadband it sells for $40-50.

Esteves’ comments come the closest yet to admitting what Internet Overcharging critics have claimed all along — usage-limiting pricing schemes are about protecting revenue from cable television packages, and boosting profits that have waned on the television side of the business.  In the 2009 experiment, light users would have faced usage limits as little as 1GB per month, with a steep overlimit penalty, so critics doubt light users would realize any significant savings, and “heavy users” would face overlimit penalties that represent almost pure profit for the cable operator.

A Little Rock hairdresser’s electronic shrine to the rock group KISS has led to a standoff with Verizon Wireless, who claims the device is jamming their wireless signal.

Stacie “Mack” McIntosh received the pinball machine-sized “shrine,” complete with miniatures of group members and a working light show, as a gift from fellow KISS devotees.  When she plugs it in and turns it on, Verizon Wireless’ signal degrades in the immediate area — a victim of some unknown interference the wireless company attributes to the device.  Now the cell phone company is demanding McIntosh get rid of the shrine, or at least leave it unplugged, and McIntosh has refused.

“What can they do to me? This is my salon,” she told local TV station KLRT. “I pay the bills.”

For now, the KISS show must go on, and visitors who shop in and around McIntosh’s salon have to endure one signal bar (or less) of reception.

But the problem may soon turn up elsewhere in Arkansas and beyond.  The company that manufactured the original KISS shrine, Weird Art Productions, is busily creating more shrines that could lead to more interference problems.

Verizon says interference to their cell phone network isn’t limited to music group shrines.  Malfunctioning transmitters, electronic light signs, wireless devices at drive-thru restaurants, and souped up CB radios can all cause problems on certain frequency bands, some licensed specifically to Verizon Wireless.

For now, it’s unlikely the Federal Communications Commission will actively get involved in McIntosh’s dispute, considering the interference is highly-localized around McIntosh’s salon.  But Verizon may be within its rights to insist interference problems be mitigated, especially if the KISS shrine concept goes viral.  That may eventually ensnare the manufacturer — Weird Art Productions — in what the FCC calls a “Notice of Apparent Liability,” legal jargon for its version of an indictment, sometimes followed by a substantial fine.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KLRT Little Rock Kiss vs Verizon Wireless 11-22-11.flv[/flv]

KLRT in Little Rock visits the scene of the wireless ‘crime’ — Stacie McIntosh’s KISS shrine, ensconced in her salon and ready for the next performance… for now.  (4 minutes)

Sometimes you can’t please some people no matter what you do.

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative’s $64 million fiber-to-the-home expansion project will finally bring 21st century broadband speeds to northern New Mexico. The electric co-op intends to deliver broadband speeds up to 100Mbps to 20,000 largely rural residents and businesses in Taos, Colfax, and Rio Arriba counties who have had limited access to cable broadband or live with speeds often less than 1Mbps from CenturyLink-delivered DSL.

“It’s a whole new ballgame for rural New Mexico,” shares Stop the Cap! reader Raul. “But the pinheads at the local weekly newspaper are ringing their hands over the project, suggesting only businesses deserve 100Mbps while the rest of us should be satisfied with speeds under a megabit per second.”

Indeed, editors at the Sangre de Christo Chronicle are wringing their hands over the project:

But many of us in the Kit Carson service area already have Internet service — and we’re completely happy with it. Kit Carson CEO Luis Reyes, Jr. said a large portion of the organization’s electric customers are currently under-served by other providers with Internet speeds of less than one megabit (1,000 kilobits) per second.

We have no reason to doubt that, but many of these customers probably don’t need the higher speeds. For the Internet customers who use the Internet for email, Facebook, news and other basic functions, Kit Carson’s prices will be most important. Most of us will not pay more for faster Internet speed we don’t need, but we will consider switching to a local provider if it offers identical or better service and prices.

“CenturyLink barely delivers DSL today, and has shown no interest in investing substantially in northern New Mexico, and outside of concentrated built-up areas there is no cable competition,” Raul says. “Kit Carson is the only local concern that has shown any real interest in making our community better, and the local newspaper is complaining about it.”

Proposed service area for Kit Carson Electric's new fiber to the home network serving northern New Mexico.

Kit Carson Electric’s project will provide a true fiber-to-the-home service bundling television, telephone, and broadband service — a substantial upgrade over what the telephone company has on offer.  With speeds far beyond what cable and phone providers in New Mexico are accustomed to providing, the region stands to benefit from entrepreneurs building digital economy businesses over a broadband network that can actually help, not hinder online development.

Currently, area residents pay CenturyLink up to $55 a month for 1.5/1Mbps DSL service.  Residents are so excited by the prospects of much faster speeds at significantly lower prices, Kit Carson Electric has developed an innovative stop-gap service for residents still waiting for direct fiber connections — fiber-to-wireless service.  New and existing customers can sign up for the service for a $100 installation fee and choose from three service tiers:

• 3Mbps — $29.95/month
• 7Mbps — $39.95/month
• 10Mbps — $49.95/month

A three year contract is required (early termination fee is $200).  But customers who eventually obtain Kit Carson Electric’s fiber service will automatically satisfy their contract requirement.

“Kit Carson’s wireless project already blows away CenturyLink’s speeds and pricing, and that is for inferior wireless,” Raul argues. “The Chronicle doesn’t have a clue.”

We can’t understand the newspaper’s concerns either.  Kit Carson Electric has already demonstrated their prices (and interest) in northern New Mexico is superior to that of CenturyLink, owner of former Baby Bell Qwest, which serves New Mexico.

Republican Sen. Jeff Bingaman is thrilled with Kit Carson’s broadband initiative.

“This major investment in broadband technology is exactly the kind of project I had envisioned when I voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman said. “This grant is not only creating jobs now in northern New Mexico, it is laying the groundwork to attract new businesses, improve healthcare services and create new education opportunities in the future.”

The electric co-op has been successful operating non-profit businesses selling propane, telecommunications, and economic development space.  The fiber project will also allow the electric utility to deploy “smart grid” technology to increase the efficiency of their electric service.

A groundbreaking ceremony at the broadband project’s command center held this past summer also coincided with a public emergency communications network upgrade which will increase the efficiency and reliability of first responders and other emergency and public safety agencies.