Stopping robocalls

Landline customers in swing states have been under assault since last weekend from waves of robocalls, some containing false and misleading voting information, that have come in at rates of 20, 30, or even more every hour.

“Robocalls” are the annoying recorded messages mass-blasted to landline customers from candidates, their wives, political allies, and astroturf groups encouraging support for particular candidates or demonizing their opponents. While most landline customers receive a handful of “get out the vote” reminders during Election Day, voters in hotly-contested swing states are under siege with dozens upon dozens of recorded political messages. Now some are unplugging their phones until the polls close.

In Wisconsin, one woman said she received “calls” from President Obama, Governor Romney, and 63 others before she finally pulled the plug on her phone.

[flv width=”576″ height=”344″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WXMI Grand Rapids Assault of the Robocall 11-5-12.flv[/flv]

Norma Escribano-Smith in Grandville got 65 robocalls on her phone before she finally became so exasperated, she unplugged it. WXMI in Grand Rapids reports on life in a swing state. (3 minutes)

Some groups blast out calls opposing specific ballot measures — marriage equality and tax measures are two hot issues this season. Others are more clandestine about their true identity, launched by dirty tricks firms that are masters in the dark art of the misleading robocall.

In Florida, registered voters in heavily Democratic areas report getting calls identified by Caller ID as the local Obama campaign office. The recorded messages that follow inaccurately tell voters the election has “been extended” and they can “vote for Obama tomorrow” by dropping off their ballots at a local polling place. The local Obama office is not the source of the calls, however. Someone is faking (better known as “spoofing”) the Caller ID information.

In Tucson, Ariz., local Republicans are getting calls suggesting their party supports a state proposition on the ballot the GOP actually opposes. Over in Phoenix, the campaign of Republican candidate Jeff Flake was caught making misleading and inaccurate robocalls misdirecting Democratic supporters of Richard Carmona to the wrong polling locations, often miles away. Those calls are now being looked at by the Department of Justice in Washington.

Democrat Mary Crecco of Scottsdale  said she “just freaked out” when she got the Flake robocall. “It was totally wrong, totally wrong, and I feel like it was done purposely,” she told a Phoenix TV station.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KPNX Phoenix Democrats fuming over Flake robocalls 11-5-12.flv[/flv]

KPNX’s ‘Watch Dogs’ launched a special investigation into misleading robocalls from the campaign of Jeff Flake misdirecting Phoenix-area Democrats to the wrong polling locations. (3 minutes)

So who avoids robocalls? Cell phone customers. Under FCC rules, robocalls to cell phones are not permitted without permission from the person being called. In Pennsylvania, one Verizon Wireless store manager reported brisk sales from customers in the last few weeks driven away from their landline by the avalanche of political messages and other telemarketers.

Some states have successfully controlled the onslaught with laws that do not allow recorded robocalls unless first introduced by a live operator asking for permission to play them. That dramatically raises the cost of robocalling, leading many groups back to traditional mailers or broadcast advertising, both only slightly less annoying.

“Four out of five calls this morning were political calls,” John Fox, Pottsville, told a Pennsylania newspaper Monday at Fairlane Village mall. “I told my wife not to answer the phone anymore.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSAW Wausau Voters Annoyed by Political Robocalls 11-5-12.mp4[/flv]

 WSAW in Wausau has started giving out tips to call-weary Wisconsin voters who are fed up with a constant assault of robocalls on their home phones.  (2 minutes)

Burlington Telecom, the troubled publicly-owned fiber broadband network for Burlington, Vt., is working on a comeback by finally boosting its speeds well beyond what competitors FairPoint Communications and Comcast can offer residential broadband subscribers.

BT will offer residents 40/40Mbps service for $99.99 per month and 1,000/1,000Mbps service for just $50 more per month (with a 12-month contract), starting Dec. 1:

Stop the Cap! previously recommended BT consider offering faster speed packages that give subscribers a compelling reason to switch from Comcast or FairPoint. Community broadband providers with fiber optic networks need to leverage those superior networks to drive new customers to sign up, and BT certainly could use a influx of new business as it fights through its financial problems.

We strongly recommend BT consider boosting its 40/40Mbps offering to at least 100/100Mbps at the $100 price point to better compete with Comcast’s Extreme 105 tier, which offers 105/20Mbps for just $15 more per month. Pricing and speeds must be comparable with the cable competition to compel a customer to go through the hassle of changing providers, and most subscribers still don’t value higher upload speeds as much as download speeds.

BT’s gigabit offering succeeds on all counts, but it is unlikely to draw a large percentage of customers willing to pay $150 a month for residential Internet service.

Moffett

I spend my days listening to Big Telecom company earnings conference calls so you don’t have to. On this morning’s call with Time Warner Cable investors, Sanford Bernstein’s Craig Moffett raised his hand yet again for another round of questioning Time Warner Cable executives for news on when the company will begin gouging their customers with Internet Overcharging schemes like usage-based billing. It is rare when Moffett does not ask Time Warner about when it plans to get the Money Party started with even higher prices for the company’s broadband customers.

Both Rob Marcus (chief operating officer) and Irene Esteves (chief financial officer) do their best to assuage Moffett his dreams of usage pricing may still someday come true (we’ve underlined some important points):

Craig Moffett – Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division: Rob or Irene, maybe you could just update us a little bit on your latest thinking with usage-based pricing, what’s been happening in Texas? And with the cable modem fee, which is obviously not a step in usage-based pricing, does that put off anything that you would otherwise do in moving toward usage-based pricing over the next couple of months? How should we think about that?

Robert D. Marcus – president and chief operating officer: So we’re now in Texas, the Carolinas and the Midwest with usage-based pricing. [We’re planning to introduce it] in the Northeast [in] the next month or so. And I think by year-end, we’ll be 100% across the footprint with [usage pricing] available [on] Internet Essentials, as we call it. I think that although the customer uptake of Internet Essentials is still small, it’s a very important principle that we’ve established, one that usage and price relate to one another. And secondly, we think it’s very important that we give customers who use less a choice to pay less. And whether or not there is a significant uptake of the service, we think those are very important principles to have established. So we’re in no way reducing the emphasis on that product because the numbers are still relatively small.

Irene M. Esteves – chief financial officer and executive vice president: And as far as the modem fee, we’re looking at that as part of our overall pricing strategy on [High Speed Internet]. We shouldn’t think about it as separate and apart from what our customers are paying us for the overall service. We think  it makes sense given what the competition is charging.

Time Warner Cable customers irritated by the cable operator’s new $3.95 monthly modem rental fee who do not want to pay premium prices for a purchased modem can enjoy the benefits of a loophole by ordering broadband service from Earthlink, which offers nearly identical performance over Time Warner’s cable broadband network and currently charges no modem rental fees.

Earthlink has maintained a third party agreement to provide its service over Time Warner Cable for more than a decade, and the company’s service operates transparently over your existing Time Warner Cable connection and equipment. In our own tests, we found Earthlink’s service identical to Time Warner Cable with two exceptions:

1. Earthlink does not provide Time Warner’s “Speedboost” technology which delivers slightly faster service for the first few seconds of a large file transfer;
2. You will receive an Earthlink e-mail address and forfeit your existing Time Warner Cable e-mail account.

The current promotional offers:

• Up to 768 Kbps service: $29.95/month
• Up to 6.0-10.0 Mbps service: $29.95/month for first 6 months; $41.95/month thereafter
• Up to 10.0-15.0 Mbps service: $39.90/month for first 6 months; $51.90/month thereafter
• Standard installation fee varies by region.
• Term Commitment (contract): None (no contract required)

Despite information on Earthlink’s website, the upload/download speeds on offer are identical to what Time Warner Cable or Bright House sells for their Standard or Turbo services in your area. After six months, you can purchase your own modem and return to Bright House or Time Warner Cable on a New Customer promotion and further extend your savings.

We found Earthlink’s online service qualifier not always accurate. For example, we found service at Stop the Cap! HQ “unavailable,” even though an address a few doors down qualified for service. We also discovered Earthlink heavily promotes its more expensive 15Mbps option, ignoring the less expensive 10Mbps service, even though both are available.

No matter. You can skip the hassle and just call your local Time Warner Cable office, which will process your order for Earthlink instantly over the phone. You do not need a new modem — a simple billing change on Time Warner Cable’s computer system is all that is required to switch providers. Earthlink will be billed on your Time Warner Cable bill.

Be aware that switching to Earthlink could effect any double-play or triple-play packages you signed up for earlier. Ask your TWC representative if there are any unintended pricing consequences for changing Internet providers. If there are, let them know you are switching to save money and ask if TWC can offer any competing retention offers to match the price. You may find Time Warner amenable to keeping your business and lowering your price.

There is no long term guarantee Time Warner won’t force Earthlink to charge an identical modem rental fee in the near future, but at least you can avoid paying it now until the authorized modems on Time Warner’s list come down in price.

Tomorrow is election day in the United States. Stop the Cap! has reviewed both presidential candidates’ positions (or the lack thereof) as well as the past voting records and platforms of members of both major political parties. With this in mind, it is time for our election guide for broadband enthusiasts. Regardless of what candidate you support, please get out and vote!

Neither political party or candidate has been perfect on broadband advocacy or consumer protection.

We’ve been disappointed by the Obama Administration, whose FCC chairman has major problems standing up to large telecom companies and their friends in the Republican-led House of Representatives. Julius Genachowski promised a lot and delivered very little on broadband reform policies that protect both consumers and the open Internet. Both President Obama and Genachowski’s rhetoric simply have not matched the results.

Bitterly disappointing moments included Genachowski’s cave-in on Net Neutrality, leaving watered down net protections challenged in court by some of the same companies that praised Genachowski’s willingness to compromise. Genachowski’s thank you card arrived in the form of a lawsuit. His unwillingness to take the common sense approach of defining broadband as a “telecommunications service” has left Internet policies hanging by a tenuous thread, waiting to be snipped by the first D.C. federal judge with a pair of sharp scissors. But even worse, the FCC chairman’s blinders on usage caps and usage billing have left him unbelievably naive about this pricing scheme. No, Mr. Genachowski, usage pricing is not about innovation, it’s about monetizing broadband usage for even fatter profits at the expense of average consumers already overpaying for Internet access.

Obama

Unfortunately, the alternative choice may be worse. Let’s compare the two parties and their candidates:

The Obama Administration treats broadband comparably to alternative energy. Both deliver promise, but not if we wait for private companies to do all of the heavy lifting. The Obama Administration believes Internet expansion needs government assistance to overcome the current blockade of access for anyone failing to meet private Return On Investment requirements.

While this sober business analysis has kept private providers from upsetting investors with expensive capital investments, it has also allowed millions of Americans to go without service. The “incremental growth” argument advocated by private providers has allowed the United States’ leadership role on broadband to falter. In both Europe and Asia, even small nations now outpace the United States deploying advanced broadband networks which offer far higher capacity, usually at dramatically lower prices. Usually, other nations one-upping the United States is treated like a threat to national security. This time, the argument is that those other countries don’t actually need the broadband networks they have, nor do we.

The Obama Administration bows to the reality that private companies simply will not invest in unprofitable service areas unless the government helps pick up the tab. But those companies also want the government to spend the money with as little oversight over their networks as possible.

That sets up the classic conflict between the two political parties — Democrats who want to see broadband treated like a critically-important utility that deserves some government oversight in its current state and Republicans who want to leave matters entirely in the hands of private providers who they claim know best, and keep the government out of it.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s regular cave-ins for the benefit of Big Telecom brought heavy criticism from us for his “cowardly lion” act.

Just about the only thing the two parties agree on is reforming the Universal Service Fund, which had until recently been directing millions to keeping traditional phone service up and running even as Americans increasingly abandon landlines.

But differences quickly emerge from there.

The Obama Administration believes broadband is increasingly a service every American must be able to access if sought. The Romney-Ryan campaign hasn’t spoken to the issue much beyond the general Republican platform that market forces will resolve virtually any problem when sufficient demand arises.

Republicans almost uniformly vociferously oppose Net Neutrality, believing broadband networks are the sole property of the providers that offer the service. Many Republicans characterize Net Neutrality as a “government takeover” of the Internet and a government policy that would “micromanage broadband” like it was a railroad. Somehow, they seem to have forgotten railroad monopolies used to be a problem for the United States in the early 20th century. Robber barons, anyone?

President Obama pushed for strong Net Neutrality protections for Americans, but his FCC chairman Julius Genachowski caved to the demands of AT&T, Verizon, and the cable industry by managing Net Neutrality with a disappointing “light touch” for those providers. (We’d call it “fondling” ourselves.)

Democrats favor wireless auctions and spectrum expansion, but many favor limits that reserve certain spectrum for emerging competitors and for unlicensed wireless use. Republicans trend towards “winner take all” auctions which probably will favor deep-pocketed incumbents like AT&T and Verizon. The GOP also does not support holding back as much spectrum for unlicensed use.

Republicans have been strongly supporting the deregulation of “special access” service, critical to competitors who need backhaul access to the Internet sold by large phone companies like AT&T. Critics contend the pricing deregulation has allowed a handful of phone companies to lock out competitors, particularly on the wireless side, with extremely high prices for access without any pricing oversight. The FCC under the Obama Administration suspended that deregulation last summer, a clear sign it thinks current pricing is suspect.

Romney

Opponents of usage-based pricing of Internet access have gotten shabby treatment from both parties. Republicans have shown no interest in involving themselves in a debate about the fairness of usage pricing, but neither have many Democrats.

As for publicly-owned broadband networks, sometimes called municipal broadband, the Republican record on the state and federal level is pretty clear — they actively oppose community broadband networks and many have worked with corporate front groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to ban them on the state level. Democrats tend to be more favorable, but not always.

The biggest problem broadband advocates face on the federal and state level is the ongoing pervasive influence of Big Telecom campaign contributions. While politicians uniformly deny that corporate money holds any influence over their voting, the record clearly indicates otherwise. Nothing else explains the signatures from Democrats that received healthy injections of campaign cash from companies like AT&T, and then used the company’s own talking points to oppose Net Neutrality.

But in a story of the lesser of two-evils, we cannot forget AT&T spends even more to promote Republican interests, because often those interests are shared by AT&T:

• AT&T has spent nearly $900,000 on self-identified “tea party” candidates pledged to AT&T’s deregulation policies;
• AT&T gave nearly $2 million to the Republican Governors Association — a key part of their ALEC agenda;
• AT&T gave $100,000 to everyone’s favorite dollar-a-holler Astroturf group — The Heartland Institute, which opposes Net Neutrality and community broadband.