Some customers flipping through Verizon FiOS TV’s on-screen guide were shocked to discover movies like “I Banged My Stepdad,” “Pigtail Teens Pounded,” and “Mom, Daughter and Me,” available for on-demand viewing and now the company is defending itself against charges it is a porn peddler.

Morality in Media’s 2014 Dirty Dozen List gives prominent placement to Verizon’s adult pay-per-view service, which includes hardcore pornography that implies underage sex and incest.

“Verizon needs to show some corporate responsibility,” Patrick Trueman, president and CEO of Morality in Media told FOX News. “America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography and that harm falls particularly hard on children. We are coordinating with the members of our coalition, numbering 146 groups across the U. S., to alert the public to Verizon’s pornography distribution.”

The conservative media watchdog group has drawn some support from those uncomfortable with the nature of some of the titles Verizon is making available for purchase.

Ari Zoldan, CEO of digital communications company Quantum Networks, told FOX “as Americans we believe in freedom of speech, but we also believe in protection of our children’s welfare and well-being first and foremost.”

Verizon defended its programming decisions as a matter of customer choice.

“The explosion in choice is a tremendous benefit to consumers, but not all consumers want to have access to all content for themselves and their families all of the time,” Verizon’s associate director for advertising and content standards John P. Artney wrote to Morality in Media. “Not all content is desirable to or appropriate for all consumers, however, and Verizon is proud to provide our customers with myriad tools to control the types of content that they and their families have access to through our service.”

Tracking Cable’s Top Internet Speeds

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) offers this infographic to suggest the deregulated cable broadband industry works well without any interference from meddling politicians.

Their claim: “Ongoing investments have enabled cable providers to continue boosting broadband speeds with top tiers increasing 50% every year.”

The reality: Cable’s broadband speed comes at a very high cost. The majority of Americans cannot buy 505Mbps residential broadband service from Comcast and even if you could, the price tag hovers around $300 a month, with a nearly-$1,000 early contract termination penalty, a $250 installation and $250 activation fee. Customers at other cable providers often find their maximum speed is just 50Mbps and/or their Internet usage is limited by a usage cap.

Google Fiber and some other gigabit fiber to the home providers are offering unlimited 1,000Mbps service for $70 a month with no installation or activation fee if a customer agrees to stick around.

Verdict: The cable industry could do better for much less.

Gov. Cuomo

New York State is hardly overwhelmed with excitement over the merger of the nation’s largest and second-largest cable operators and is taking steps to give regulators enough power to derail the merger.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has decided the state will not be a bystander as the $45 billion deal is reviewed by federal regulators and is seeking new powers for the state’s Public Service Commission that could force Comcast and Time Warner Cable to prove their merger is pro-consumer.

The New York Post reports the new approach would be the opposite of current rules that force the PSC to carry the burden of proof that a deal hurts the public interest.

“[The proposed changes] are very important arrangements, and the state has a valid role in making sure that the consumer is protected,” Cuomo said at the State Museum in Albany.

A source told the newspaper the rules change “could essentially kill the deal.”

Since the federal government deregulated the cable industry in the 1990s, state and local officials have had little oversight over cable service and pricing, but in many states regulators still have a voice in mergers and other business deals.

The Cuomo Administration denied the rule changes were specifically aimed at Comcast, claiming that the state was simply mirroring the type of regulations impacting gas and oil companies doing business in New York.

If the deal fails to win approval in New York, it would mean Comcast could not assume control of Time Warner Cable’s lucrative franchises in New York City and most of upstate New York. Analysts speculate Comcast is especially interested in aligning its operations in northern New Jersey with those of Time Warner Cable in New York — both part of the largest television market in the country.

So far, Comcast does not seem concerned about Cuomo’s proposal.

“We are confident that the pro-competitive, pro-consumer benefits like faster Internet speeds and improved video options resulting from the transaction are compelling and will result in approval from the state,” Comcast said in a statement, adding that it looks forward to “presenting the multiple consumer benefits” of the deal for New Yorkers.

Reuters reports Florida, Indiana and Pennsylvania — home state for Comcast’s corporate headquarters — will also be taking a closer look at the merger.

Florida will be coordinating with U.S. Department of Justice’s anti-trust officials to review the deal.

“We are part of a multistate group reviewing the proposed transaction along with the U.S. DOJ Antitrust Division,” the Florida attorney general’s office said in an email.

Indiana is studying the impact of the merger on its state, and Pennsylvania promised an “independent review.”

The attorneys general group is focused on broadband instead of cable television in assessing the $45.2 billion deal, according to a source familiar with the effort who was not authorized to speak on the record.

A denial of service attack often directs compromised computers to join in the attack, bringing an enormous amount of simultaneous traffic to a single, targeted user. The result is usually very slow or no Internet service. (Image courtesy: Cisco)

For nearly a month, Verizon FiOS customers in Westborough and Northborough, Mass. have experienced frequent slowdowns and outages of their Internet and telephone service that Verizon now admits have been traced to a denial-of-service attack on a single residential customer in Westborough.

“Someone deliberately flooded that customer with an overwhelming amount of traffic that rendered their Internet service inoperable,” Verizon spokesman Philip G. Santoro told The Telegram. “When that happened, it caused Internet service to periodically slow down for other customers in Westborough,” he wrote. “We are working to restore service to normal as soon as possible. DOS attacks are all too common today among customers of all Internet providers. It’s important to remind Internet users to keep their firewalls operating and to keep their security software current.”

When the newspaper first reached Santoro for comment, he claimed there wwere no widespread outages reported, but angry customers disagreed on the community’s Facebook page and six filed complaints with the state’s Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation.

The outages have been a problem as far back as Feb. 26, growing more frequent in number since March 3. Business customers were also affected.

“It happened around 3 o’clock, every day,” said Allen Falcon, chief executive officer for Cumulus Global, a cloud computing company in Westborough. “Sometimes it was a few minutes, sometimes 45 minutes to an hour.” A few times, the interruptions occurred in the morning, just after 9 a.m., he said.

When the attacks began, they not only affected the company’s Internet connection, but also its business phone service.

Verizon’s first solution was to replace FiOS routers, which proved ineffective.

Customer Steve Winer from Westborough told the newspaper sending Verizon crews out with new equipment was a waste of time and money.

“I am just wondering how much time and money was wasted on this,” he wrote the newspaper in an email. “I know I spent at least a couple of hours on the phone, and others shared similar stories. But, if you add up all the shipped routers and unnecessary service calls, along with the time both of us customers and (Verizon) personnel, I am sure it really adds up, and could have been avoided if someone had simply put two and two together and posted a chronic outage which began in February.”

Last week, Verizon finally identified the specific customer targeted by the cyber-attack and terminated his FiOS account, which also put an end to the service-disrupting attacks.

Some customers are wondering whether Verizon has an effective plan to deal with future cyber attacks.

“It seems FiOS is very vulnerable to these attacks, which not only affects the target’s service, but that of everyone else in town,” wrote Stop the Cap! reader Steve Read, a Northborough resident. “They need a way to quickly isolate these kinds of attacks and keep them from affecting other customers’ service.”

Customers affected by the outages can contact Verizon FiOS customer service and request credit for the outages.

Normally when one learns they are losing a job after only a few months in management, it is a time for sober reflection and emotional recovery.

Not so for top executives at Time Warner Cable who can expect Golden Parachute packages that rival the Powerball jackpot.

CEO Robert Marcus, who will eventually walk away from Time Warner Cable after becoming its CEO only this year will receive a package worth up to $80 million, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That is way up from the estimated $56 million severance package he was anticipating.

In addition to more cash and stock options, Time Warner Cable created something called a “supplemental bonus opportunity” that will hand Marcus an extra $2.5 million in walk-around money if he agrees to stick around until the merger is completed. The idea behind the bonus incentive is to keep executives happy during the pendency of the merger. If top employees defect or lose focus on Time Warner Cable’s operating plan over the coming year, it could rattle the value of the company’s stock.

Most regular employees are not invited to the enhanced compensation party and will spend the rest of this year updating their resumes before the combined company finds millions in “cost savings” from anticipated layoffs and call center closures.

Time Warner Cable’s Golden Parachute Compensation

Among the benefits for the top-five executive officers:

• accrued but unpaid bonus for any previously completed fiscal year, based on actual results for the year;
• pro rata bonus for service during the year of termination, based on actual results for the year;
• 36 months of continued salary and bonus payments, paid on TWC’s normal payroll payment dates for salary, where the bonus component is set at target.

Wall Street Bank Money Party

In the all-encompassing merger proposal submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Time Warner Cable noted it sought the advice of several Wall Street investment banks and related institutions. Unsurprisingly, based on the material submitted voluntarily by Time Warner Cable and Comcast, the banks submitted written reports declaring that the merger proposal seemed fair. For that, these advisers were well-compensated. In all, Time Warner Cable and Comcast will pay a combined $135.5 million in fees in return for the positive assessment of the merger’s potential:

• In connection with Allen & Company’s financial advisory services, TWC has agreed to pay Allen & Company an aggregate cash fee of $25 million, a portion of which was payable upon delivery of Allen & Company’s opinion to the TWC board of directors in connection with the merger and $17.5 million of which is contingent upon consummation of the merger;
• In connection with Citi’s services as TWC’s financial advisor, TWC has agreed to pay Citi an aggregate fee of $36 million, of which a part was payable upon delivery of its opinion and $28.5 million is payable contingent upon consummation of the merger. In addition, TWC has agreed to reimburse Citi for certain expenses, including fees and expenses of counsel, and to indemnify Citi and related parties against certain liabilities, including under federal securities laws, arising from Citi’s engagement;
• TWC has agreed to pay Morgan Stanley for its financial advisory services in connection with the merger an aggregate fee of $36 million, of which a part was payable upon delivery of its opinion and $28.5 million is payable contingent upon the closing of the merger;
• In connection with Centerview Partner’s LLC services as the TWC independent directors’ financial advisor, TWC has agreed to pay Centerview an aggregate fee of $11 million, portions of which were payable upon the rendering of Centerview’s opinion and in connection with its engagement and $3 million of which is payable contingent upon consummation of the merger;
• J.P. Morgan has acted as financial advisor to Comcast with respect to the proposed merger and will receive a fee from Comcast for its services equal to a total of $27.5 million, $25 million of which will become payable only if the proposed merger is consummated.