The Roku set top streaming device.

The days of renting expensive set top boxes from Time Warner Cable may finally be coming to an end, at least if you happen to subscribe to the cable company’s broadband service.

Time Warner Cable this week announced a new partnership with Roku that will bring 300 Time Warner Cable channels to the video streaming device.

Time Warner Cable customers who also own Roku devices will soon find a TWC “channel” on the menu, from which subscribers can access the same streamed content found on the cable company’s viewing apps for iOS and Android devices. The service represents true IPTV television — an all digital experience streamed over Time Warner Cable’s broadband service.

Customers only have to pay for the Roku device, which ranges from $50-100. Lower priced units do not deliver a true HD viewing experience. Higher priced models support 1080p viewing and support additional features like motion control for games and external USB and Ethernet ports. Time Warner Cable currently limits HD viewing to 480p on its streaming apps, so a cheaper unit may suffice for secondary television sets.

Roku boxes also offer cable customers other viewing options apart from Time Warner Cable, including independent networks, games, movie channels, foreign language and ethnic programming, religious entertainment, global news, and a variety of self-produced and public access programming from cities around the country. Roku boxes also support Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand.

But there are a few downsides, at least for the moment. Local broadcast channels are not currently available except in New York City, but that is expected to change soon. Recording programming delivered over a Roku box is not easily possible, and viewing will reduce available bandwidth on your broadband connection.

Considering Time Warner now charges just shy of $8.50 a month for each set top box, switching to Roku will pay for itself in as little as six months. Time Warner Cable expects most customers will consider the streaming device for televisions in bedrooms and guest rooms.

Saratoga, Calif.-based Roku has had a blockbuster year, doubling the number of its employees and approaching five million units sold. Last year, consumers watched more than one billion hours of television over Roku devices.

[flv width=”534″ height=”320″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NY1 TWC and Roku 1-8-13.mp4[/flv]

Time Warner Cable’s NY1 reports on the Roku-Time Warner partnership that will let customers stream the cable company’s lineup without a traditional set top box. (1 minute)

The nation’s largest broadband stimulus grant recipient has turned a $126.3 million taxpayer funded broadband expansion program into an “orchestrated train wreck,” charged West Virginia Delegate Nancy Guthrie (D-Kanawha) on Monday.

West Virginia Homeland Security Director Jimmy Gianato defended his management of the project before a joint state House-Senate technology committee just learning it had been scaled back, dropping more than 400 sites that were slated to have fiber broadband upgrades Gianato claimed they already had.

Gianato defended the project, noting the original grant proposal was held up by the Commerce Secretary as one of the best-written proposals in the country.

Lawmakers did not criticize how the proposal was written. Instead, they questioned how the project was administered and how the money was spent.

“We’ve done everything the grant said we would do,” Gianato countered.

Many of the questions surrounded the decision to purchase 1,064 Cisco routers in 2010, which cost taxpayers $22,600 each, and were rejected by more than a few intended recipients. Several hundred routers ended up in storage, unused.

Still murky is why project managers only considered a single, expensive Cisco-brand router recommended by Verizon-employed consultants and ultimately purchased directly from Verizon.

Guthrie

Gianato claimed the federal government tied his hands requiring West Virginia’s broadband project be “shovel-ready.”

“All of the equipment was bought off contracts that had been competitively bid,” he told the conference.

But project managers and consultants can custom-tailor specifications that make it impossible for vendors to specify anything other than the Cisco router Verizon conveniently happened to sell.

Several members appeared unmoved by statements defending the decision to deploy identical, expensive routers to every West Virginia anchor institution, despite the fact they were designed to serve a minimum of 500 concurrent users and often ended up in rural community libraries with less than five public terminals.

Gale Given, the state’s chief technology officer, supported Gianato.

“The team determined that capacity should be provided to permit these community anchor institutions to deploy the applications that were required to meet future needs, not their current needs,” Given wrote in a letter to state lawmakers. “It would be a mistake to determine in advance that entities with low bandwidth requirements today will not have high bandwidth requirements in the future. To have shortchanged our smaller, more rural areas would have gone against the entire intent of the program.”

But now West Virginia taxpayers will be on the hook to cover the costs of making the new equipment compatible with existing equipment in certain state facilities.

At least 70 State Police detachments will begin using the once-rejected routers once the state spends $90,000 for new modules to update the agency’s voicemail system, which is not compatible with the routers.

State libraries also won a break from Frontier Communications, who agreed to supply fiber broadband service to 170 mostly small, rural libraries that could not afford the fiber upgrade. Frontier has agreed to supply the fiber service for the same price libraries pay for their existing service.

Comcast customers in New Hampshire are facing a rate hike for cable, broadband and phone service on Jan. 22.

Basic cable rates are going up nearly 6 percent, from $23.02 to $24.60 per month, but expanded basic customers will enjoy a slight decrease from $46.11 to $45.35.

Most customers signed to a Comcast bundle will see slightly larger increases — around $5 a month — for triple play packages. Comcast blamed the rate increase on increased technology expenses, bringing faster Internet service to customers, improved customer service, and more on-demand online viewing.

Customers on price-lock agreements, promotional plans, or other contracts are unaffected until those agreements expire.

Local officials around New Hampshire say their hands are tied. Cable operators enjoy almost complete power setting their own rates as they see fit. The largest competitors for Comcast in New Hampshire are satellite dish providers, and those rates are increasing as well.

Time Warner Cable announced late last week it would add 650 call center jobs in South Carolina in 2013.

Most of the new positions will be in Lexington County at a newly expanded call center in West Columbia.

The company said it was increasing telephone sales and support positions by 50 percent in the state and would make a $24 million investment in its operations this year.

Gov. Nikki Haley said Time Warner Cable chose South Carolina for its business-friendly climate.

“The ultimate celebration in South Carolina is when a company expands,” Haley said at an event announcing the expansion. “It’s the biggest compliment to a county, it’s the biggest compliment to a state because it shows that there is true commitment in taking care of the businesses that we already have.”

In July, Haley further demonstrated that commitment by signing a bill promoted by Time Warner Cable and other telecommunications companies that would make it next to impossible for communities to construct and operate their own broadband networks in a state woefully underserved by the cable company and AT&T.

As Christopher Mitchell from Community Broadband Networks points out, the new law is corporate welfare at its finest, requiring local governments to avoid undercutting the rates charged by incumbent phone and cable companies, even if the government could provide the service at reduced cost.

“It effectively prohibits municipalities from operating their own broadband systems through a series of regulatory and reporting requirements,” said Catharine Rice, president of the SouthEastAssociation of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (SEATOA). “These practically guarantee municipalities could never find financing because the requirements would render even a private sector broadband company inoperable.”

The majority of the new jobs are expected to start at salaries under $40,000 a year. In May, Frontier Communications opened its own call center in Horry County that pays much lower salaries than the call centers it replaced.

In separate announcements, Time Warner Cable noted it planned to “consolidate” call center positions in other locations, which means employees in other cities and states will either lose their jobs or accept invitations to transfer to other facilities, potentially for lower pay.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WLTX Columbia 650 New Jobs in SC At TWC 1-4-13.flv[/flv]

WLTX in Columbia favorably reports Time Warner Cable’s forthcoming hiring spree in their area.  (2 minutes)

Echoing the sentiment of many of the member organizations that finance it, the nation’s largest cable lobbying group — the National Cable and Telecommunications Association — may now see itself as a trade organization of broadband providers, so it is considering a name change.

The group filed a trademark application for the brand, “NCTA The Internet and Television Association” at the end of December according to a report by Fierce Cable.

An NCTA spokesperson claimed the new name was just an idea at this point and no formal name change is anticipated at this time. But the move does represent a growing trend away from the product its members are most famous for providing: cable television.

The NCTA got its start in September 1951 as the National Community Television Council, representing the interests of operators that provided community antenna service primarily in the mountainous Appalachian region. The following year it was rebranded the National Community Television Association (NCTA).

By the late 1960s, “community television” was dropped in favor of “cable television” and the group remained known as the National Cable Television Association until 2001, when operators realized the growing importance of broadband. As a result, the group adopted the name it still uses today: the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

The NCTA is dominated by the nation’s largest cable operators, particularly Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Smaller, independent cable operators have felt disenfranchised from the NCTA, which caters to the interests of enormous corporate telecommunications companies, so 150 independent operators banded together and formed the American Cable Association (ACA) in 1993.