For more than 20 years, Boston residents have watched NBC for free on WHDH-TV Channel 7. But if Comcast gets its way, at least four million Beantown viewers may have to subscribe to pay cable television service to keep watching.

This morning, WHDH filed suit against the cable giant in federal court in Boston alleging Comcast broke federal and state laws and an agreement it signed with antitrust regulators when it announced it would not renew WHDH’s affiliation contract with NBC. Comcast acquired NBC in 2011, after agreeing to conditions preventing the cable company from engaging in anti-competitive behavior.

Media observers say Comcast has made no secret of its desire to buy WHDH or another Boston over the air station, to build its network of affiliates directly owned and operated by the cable company. Station owner Ed Ansin isn’t selling, at least not at Comcast’s current asking price. But eyebrows were raised when Comcast announced it would end its affiliation agreement with WHDH – a well-known, high-powered television station – and move NBC programming to New England Cable News (NECN), a low-rated Comcast-owned cable channel.

Unless something changes, NECN will disappear on Jan. 1, 2017, replaced by a new “NBC Boston” cable channel. The decision will also strand WHDH without a major network affiliation, which is likely to significantly cut the station’s value and ratings.

“Comcast has a reputation for pushing the envelope wherever they can but they’ve just done an awful lot of things wrong here,” said Ansin.

In an effort to limit the damaging optics of Comcast forcing free network television programming to pay cable, Comcast announced it would also relay its NBC Boston cable channel over a UHF channel in another state now showing Telemundo programming. Those without cable will have to adjust their antennas carefully to receive WNEU-TV Channel 60, in Merrimack, N.H, the new home of NBC for Boston-area cord-cutters and cord-nevers.

WNEU’s coverage area only reaches 50% of the Boston television market.

That may be good news for New Hampshire residents in Concord or Nashua that may have had trouble watching NBC shows over WHDH, but very bad news for about four million people inside Greater Boston who live where WNEU’s signal doesn’t reach, including those in primarily minority communities like Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Brockton. Those residents, along with other areas in southern Boston, will likely have to call Comcast and buy cable TV to keep watching NBC starting this January.

WHDH’s lawyers have now pushed back:

When Comcast, the largest cable company in the world, acquired NBC in 2011, there was widespread concern about the impact this unprecedented accumulation of power in the television industry would have on viewers and other market participants. Particularly in markets like Boston, where Comcast is the dominant cable provider, citizen groups, industry participants and government agencies expressed concern that Comcast would seek to leverage its cable holdings and in the process degrade its broadcasting presence and diminish the important public service role that broadcast television stations historically have played.  To address those concerns, Comcast promised its NBC affiliates (including WHDH) that it would negotiate affiliate extensions in good faith such that over the air access would be maintained, and cable interests would not influence those negotiations.  As part of the FCC’s approval of Comcast’s acquisition of NBC, the FCC adopted these same conditions in order to protect the public interest.

WHDH believes that Comcast has violated these conditions.  It also believes that Comcast’s actions violate Massachusetts law prohibiting unfair and deceptive business practices.  Finally, WHDH believes that Comcast’s actions violate federal and state antitrust laws because they have enabled Comcast to increase its monopoly power in the Boston television market, and the resulting decrease in competition will harm consumers, advertisers and other broadcasters.

In its suit WHDH is seeking an injunction and an order requiring Comcast to comply with its obligations under its agreement with WHDH and the FCC order. WHDH will also seek damages.

WHDH also accuses Comcast of stringing it along on the renewal of its affiliate agreement, claiming they were told discussions about an extension would begin “when the time was right.” WHDH says Comcast was plotting to launch its own cable network alternative all along, and didn’t negotiate in good faith. In July 2013, NECN ad sales representatives began telling advertisers it would soon become the local NBC affiliate. After WHDH protested to Comcast, the cable company claimed NECN’s statements were untrue.

“No major national broadcaster has ever terminated its relationship with a successful independent affiliate in a major market to build its own local affiliate from scratch,” WHDH lawyers wrote.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHDH Boston Major announcement involving NBC and WHDH-TV 1-7-16.mp4[/flv]

WHDH in Boston informed viewers back in January that Comcast was not going to renew its affiliation agreement with NBC. Today, WHDH’s lawyers took Comcast to court. (3:27)

Syracuse residents will be the first in upstate New York to benefit from Time Warner Cable’s Maxx upgrade program, which has been gradually moving across the cable company’s footprint.

This month customers will receive communications from TWC outlining its transition to a 100%-digital network. Moving to an all-digital lineup frees up bandwidth to make faster Internet speeds possible. Each analog channel takes the space of three to four HD channels and up to 12 digital networks.

The upgrade means customers using older analog-only televisions will need set-top boxes (or similar equipment) after Time Warner drops analog television service starting in April. The company plans to introduce Maxx service this year to all TWC customers in Syracuse and its suburbs, along with the following central and northern New York service areas: Auburn, Boonville, Burlington, Champlain, Clayton, Cortland, Dixon, Fulton, Gouverneur, Hamilton, Herkimer, Ilion, Indian River, Ithaca, Lake Placid, Lowville, Madison, Malone, Massena, Meridian, Ogdensburg, Old Forge, Oneida, Oswego, Potsdam, Rome, Saranac Lake, Utica, Watertown and West Carthage.

Broadband speeds will increase starting later this spring, with customers experiencing increases up to six times faster, depending on their current level of Internet service. For example, customers who subscribe to Standard, formerly up to 15Mbps, will receive up to 50Mbps; customers who subscribe to Extreme, formerly up to 30Mbps, will receive up to 200Mbps; and customers who subscribe to Ultimate, formerly up to 50Mbps, will receive up to 300Mbps, with no change in their monthly plan price.

Some customers will need to switch out their modems to receive the faster speeds and they will be communicated with via mail, email and phone messages with information on how to get a new modem.

Further south, in Wilmington, N.C., some customers are already finding they have faster Internet speeds, if they happen to live in a neighborhood that is a part of the now completed first phase of the Maxx rollout. Customers throughout the rest of the Wilmington and surrounding areas will see their speeds increase by the end of summer 2016.

“Our customers have asked for faster Internet speeds and we’re now able to provide these faster speeds at no additional cost to all of our customers in the Wilmington area,” said Darrel Hegar, regional vice president of operations for Time Warner Cable. “This is just the beginning of the benefits customers will see from our TWC Maxx initiative that will enhance our Internet, video and reliability.”

In the Wilmington area, Time Warner Cable has rolled out more than 1,500 TWC Wi-Fi Hotspots located both in popular outdoor areas and in indoor small business locations throughout the area, like restaurants, cafes, salons and shopping malls, with more hotspots to be added through 2016. In upstate New York, Time Warner primarily offers Wi-Fi access through Business Class Internet customers that volunteer to host hotspots. In New York, Time Warner has focused most of its owned and operated hotspot buildout downstate, particularly in Manhattan.

Frontier Communications stock took a beating this afternoon after Citi analyst Michael Rollins downgraded the company’s stock from Neutral to Sell after announcing he didn’t believe Frontier’s rosy promises of synergy savings from its acquisition of Verizon’s wired networks in Florida, Texas, and California.

Rollins believes Frontier’s legacy copper networks, long overdue for significant upgrades, will continue to pose a greater-than-expected drag on Frontier’s financial performance, substantially reducing any benefits of its latest acquisition deal with Verizon. Frontier executives previously admitted they have less than a 25% market share in many of their service areas, evidence customers are dumping Frontier landlines and DSL broadband and never looking back.

Frontier was depending on the Verizon acquisition, scheduled to close March 31, to help stabilize its revenues and OIBDA numbers. That isn’t likely, according to Rollins, because Frontier customer revenue is down in all-copper service areas. Frontier’s revenues from its legacy service areas dropped more than 4 percent in 2015.

The news is slightly better in areas where Verizon has acquired fiber to the neighborhood (Connecticut) and fiber to the home (Pacific Northwest, Indiana) networks from AT&T and Verizon. Frontier FiOS has helped keep the company’s revenue stable to modestly down, but there are no clear signs Frontier plans to build its own fiber networks in its legacy service areas, outside of an experimental network in North Carolina.

As a result, Rollins is convinced the “synergy realization” numbers need to be run again. He predicts they will turn out much lower than anticipated. Experience with Frontier’s earlier acquisitions from AT&T and Verizon demonstrated lower than anticipated synergies.

Attempts by CBS to get consumers to pay the network $5.99 a month to stream ad-filled network shows, classics, and local affiliates has proven less compelling than the network originally thought.

CBS chairman and CEO Les Moonves admitted to investors “All-Access” has not met the company’s expectations, even after CBS added options to watch several of its network affiliates around the country.

Speaking at the Deutsche Bank Technology, Media & Telecom conference in Palm Beach, Fla., Moonves said CBS was considering discounting the service, especially if customers bundle it with Showtime’s standalone online video service, now priced at $10.99 a month.

Moonves

Instead of relying entirely on other companies to create so-called “skinny bundles” of pared down video packages offered as an alternative of one-size-fits-all cable TV, CBS has kept some of its online video offerings in-house under the All-Access brand, which launched in October 2014.

But convincing the public to pay $6 a month for ad-laced shows is proving as much of a challenge for CBS as it had been for Hulu’s Plus option. Moonves suggested CBS is considering adding a premium ad-free option like the one Hulu offers now, for an additional $4 a month, and is also trying to get the National Football League to allow NFL game streams on All-Access in the future.

CBS’ best chance of success for its subscription service may come from offering original shows exclusively to subscribers, particularly a new Star Trek series premiering in January. Moonves predicted that would help make All-Access an “extraordinary success.”

“Next year it’s going to add substantially to our bottom line,” he added.

Moonves called cord-cutting “inevitable,” as consumers gravitate away from traditional cable television packages.

“Someone is going to figure out how to do this and how to give people what they want […] and not for $100 a month,” Moonves said. “It will [sell] for $35-39 dollars a month [and] you’ll get the 12 to 15 or 18 channels that you care about, and not the Karate Channel for 25¢ a month. That doesn’t make sense anymore.”

When reviewing your latest Comcast cable bill with overlimit fees on it (or a $30-35 upcharge to buy their insurance plan to keep extra fees off your bill), did you realize you are part of the Usage Economy?

With some Internet Service Providers and most wireless companies rushing to monetize your Internet usage (while also jacking up the price of service), a cottage industry of software and engineering “solutions”-developers have emerged to grab a piece of Monetize Pie.

This week LogiSense Corporation celebrated itself for another deployment of its EngageIP usage and rating platform. Granted, many of its customers are using it for business class services, but we enjoyed the word salad LogiSense created about the future of usage monetizing schemes that too often effectively gouge customers:

LogiSense enables enterprises to power the Usage Economy: The dynamic convergence of subscription- and usage-based billing models, allowing service providers to monetize in real-time any triggered event in the connected world to gain significant competitive advantages. Today’s usage economy is a highly complex environment with a matrixed ecosystem of consumers and providers generating transactions that require metering, measurement and monetization. EngageIP’s real-time rating, charging, billing and customer care capabilities enable providers to monetize any subscription, over any medium and from any provider. The system transforms clients’ business practices by empowering rapid turn up of new services, enabling innovation and new revenue streams thus ensuring longevity and relevance in a rapidly evolving market.