Verizon has a moratorium on further expansion of its fiber to the home service except in areas where it has existing agreements to deliver service.

Virtually every mayor in the urban centers of upstate New York is accusing Verizon Communications of redlining poor and minority communities when deciding where to provide its fiber-to-the-home service FiOS.

Now they are telling the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice to become more closely involved in reviewing a proposed anti-competitive marketing partnership between the phone company and some of the nation’s largest cable operators.

The mayors are upset that Verizon has chosen to target its limited FiOS network primarily on affluent suburbs surrounding upstate New York city centers.

“Verizon has not built its all-fiber FiOS network in any of our densely-populated cities. Not in Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Binghamton, Kingston, Elmira or Troy,” the mayors say. “Yet, Verizon has expanded its FiOS network to the suburbs ringing Buffalo, Albany, Troy, and Syracuse, as well as many places in the Hudson Valley, and most of downstate New York. As a result, the residents and businesses in our cities are disadvantaged relative to their more affluent suburban neighbors who have access to Verizon’s FiOS, providing competitive choice in high-speed broadband and video services.”

The mayors fear the reduced competition that will come from the marketing partnership between the phone and cable industry will eliminate any pressure on Verizon to expand its fiber optic network into more New York cities. The agreement allows Verizon Wireless customers to received significant bundled discounts when they sign up for cell phone service and a cable package from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, or Bright House Networks. No corresponding discount is available to a Verizon Wireless customer choosing to bundle Verizon FiOS, putting the fiber service at a competitive disadvantage.

“These commercial agreements appear to eliminate any incentive that Verizon might have had to expand its all-fiber network to our high-density urban centers,” the mayors say. “After all, Verizon Wireless, a subsidiary of Verizon Communications, will now be able to sell Time Warner’s video and broadband service as part of their bundled package in our communities.”

That leaves most with Verizon’s DSL service, a product Verizon has been marketing less and less to its customers. The company recently announced it would no longer sell standalone DSL broadband, another point of contention for the mayors.

The mayors are concerned that Verizon’s deteriorating landline network will have profound implications for city centers, where tele-medicine, education, business, and entertainment services will all be left lacking if the fiber network is not extended.

“As you are well aware, high-speed broadband is critical to economic development and job creation, as well as improvements in health care, education, public safety, and civic discourse which is so essential to communal life,” say the mayors. “The economic health of our cities and our upstate region depends upon access to the same first-rate communications infrastructure available to the New York City metropolitan region and the suburban communities that ring our cities.”

The nine mayors are also questioning whether Verizon executives misled them when they claimed Verizon’s strong financial performance would allow the company to reinvest profits into further expansion of its FiOS network. Verizon executives have since admitted the company is indefinitely finished with FiOS expansion, except in areas where it already committed to build the fiber network.

Signing the letter were:

• Byron W. Brown – Mayor, City of Buffalo
• Stephanie A. Miner – Mayor, City of Syracuse
• Gerald D. Jennings – Mayor, City of Albany
• Matthew T. Ryan – Mayor, City of Binghamton
• Shayne R. Gallo – Mayor, City of Kingston
• Susan Skidmore – Mayor, City of Elmira
• Brian Tobin – Mayor, City of Cortland
• Robert Palmieri – Mayor, City of Utica
• Lou Rosamilla – Mayor, City of Troy

(The city of Rochester is served by Frontier Communications, which has no plans to deliver a fiber to the home network within its local service area.)

The southern tier city of Elmira, N.Y. is not too happy with Time Warner Cable’s lock on the local cable market.

“There’s no competition so their prices continue to go up, their offers continue to go down, and the people here with no other competition are just paying and paying and paying,” Elmira mayor Sue Skidmore told WETM News.

Skidmore and the city council intend to hold public hearings on the cable operator’s franchise renewal before they attempt to negotiate the next 10-year agreement with the cable company.

“This gives the public an opportunity to come and say anything good or bad pertaining to the cable franchise,” said city manager John Burin. The public meeting is scheduled for 7pm, June 4, on the second floor of Elmira City Hall.

Skidmore

The city’s ability to press Time Warner Cable for lower rates or service changes are extremely limited, however. Wholesale deregulation of the cable television industry has allowed most cable operators to manage their systems as they see fit, with no obligation to accept the recommendations of local government.

This fact of life was underscored when Time Warner mailed its own vision of what a renewal agreement with the city should look like, prior to any public discussion.

The city’s lawyer, John Ryan Jr., told the Ithaca Journal the company deleted several provisions in the proposed renewal agreement that are part of the current agreement. Ryan intends to speak with the operator about those changes, and wants to see changes in the city’s favor.

In most franchise renewal agreements, the only leverage a city typically has is to threaten not to renew a cable franchise. That is a very rare occurrence, however, because it is exceptionally rare for another major cable provider to agree to service a city that cancels a franchise renewal with another company. In the end, most renewal agreements come down to handshake agreements to correct any long-standing service issues, agree to wire certain unserved areas, and negotiate over public, educational, and government access channels and franchise fees payable to the city.

The local telephone company, Verizon Communications, has no plans to provide its FiOS fiber optic service in the city, leaving customers with the competitive option of landline phone service, DSL, and a contract with Verizon’s satellite TV partner, DirecTV.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WETM Elmira City Of Elmira To Negotiate With Time Warner Cable 5-21-12.mp4[/flv]

WETM in Elmira reports city officials are preparing for franchise renewal discussions with Time Warner Cable. The cable company is already on that, preemptively sending the city a franchise renewal agreement it wrote itself. (1 minute)

They're not so great at broadband mapping, but they are excellent at connecting the political dots to get their contract renewed.

The telecommunications industry-dominated Connected Nation, a group created to spur industry-friendly broadband expansion, is at the center of a scandal that cost taxpayers nearly $4 million to produce a broadband availability map critics contend is error-ridden and incomplete.

The non-profit Kentucky company, which historically has close ties to some of the nation’s largest phone companies, has learned how to play political games to win lucrative contracts while producing less-than-useful results, according to a new investigation by the Miami Herald.

When Florida’s Department of Management Services (DMS) decided Connected Nation’s performance in the state was lacking, it decided to let the state’s contract with the group expire and seek other bidders.

That is a remarkable turnaround for an agency that three years earlier took bids from the group’s state chapter — Connect Florida, who estimated the cost of mapping broadband in the state at around $7.1 million.  Another bidder, ISC of Tallahassee was a real bargain, offering to do the project for $2.8 million.  Connected Nation won. So much for awarding contracts to the lowest bidder.

It turned out the judges scoring the two groups were split, until a former BellSouth (AT&T) executive serving as a judge on the panel put his thumb on the scale, awarding an astounding 51 points to Connected Nation, itself shown to have past ties to AT&T.  The other judges scored no more than 15 points in either direction.

Undercut Connected Nation's bid by millions but still lost.

ISC, a homegrown Florida business, was stunned. Managing Partner Edwin Lott told Public Knowledge in 2009:

“Florida’s small businesses are working harder than ever to survive in this challenging economy. ISC, like other small businesses around the country, have had our hopes raised with Congress’s efforts to stimulate the economy with the Reinvestment Act and other initiatives. It originally appeared these initiatives were going to provide regional funding to sustain and promote jobs in the communities served by local and state governments.

“Our raised hopes were dashed as Connected Nation appeared to use its ‘connections’ in Florida to ensure its success in what was supposed to be a competitive procurement.”

DMS officials have apparently learned their lesson (at taxpayer expense), but Connected Nation isn’t going quietly. The non-profit group unleashed a high-powered lobbying campaign directed at the state legislature in Tallahassee to get its contract renewed to continue mapping Florida’s broadband future.

Williams

It worked, but only after the group’s critics at DMS were effectively bypassed. The legislature approved and Florida governor Rick Scott signed legislation that transferred broadband mapping away from the agency altogether, launching a new one — the Department of Economic Opportunity, to handle broadband matters effective July 1.

At least this time, taxpayers will have to pay less. Connected Nation’s latest bid was half of its original price, undercutting other bidders.

Rep. Alan Williams, a Tallahassee Democrat told the Herald price does not matter as much as political connections in the state legislature.

“Is this a favor to Connected Nation and a lobbyist or is this really good government?’’ Williams asked. “Is this really being accountable and efficient to the state of Florida the way the governor wants to be?”

Sen. Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) told the newspaper Florida state government is rife with insider influence peddling, and that appears to be the case with Connected Nation’s contract.

The group’s potent lobbying team included Lanny Wiles, the husband of the governor’s campaign manager; Al Cardenas, the former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida and head of the Conservative Political Action Committee; and Slater Bayliss, a one-time aide to former Gov. Jeb Bush.

Genachowski

On Tuesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said that he generally supports data caps and tiered broadband pricing plans. The chairman’s comments came during an interview at the Cable Show with former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, now the top lobbyist with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

Genachowski has remained consistent in his cautious support for “industry innovation” that includes usage-based pricing, with a caveat providers should not exploit that at the expense of consumers.  But consumer groups like Free Press already believe usage caps, particularly on wired broadband services, are already bad for consumers, exploit a marketplace duopoly, and are worthy of investigation by the agency.

“All the evidence shows that caps on wired broadband platforms like cable make no sense. They don’t affect network congestion, even in the rare instances where congestion actually exists on these systems,” says Free Press policy director Matt Wood. “Cable companies use them to penalize their subscribers and discourage them from using innovative services that compete with cable TV.”

Free Press reminded Genachowski of Comcast’s recent actions which exempted its own video content from usage caps, while leaving them in place for competitors.

“Comcast’s recent actions show both the harms of these caps and the lack of any legitimate reason for them,” noted Wood. “[Now] Comcast changed course and suspended caps temporarily in all but a few markets — but promised to start overcharging any users there who exceeded these arbitrary limits.”

“The FCC has turned a blind eye to this competition problem. If it wants to see experimentation in pricing that actually benefits consumers, we need a competition policy that creates more experimenters.”

Verizon encourages customers to pig out on wireless-delivered streaming video.

Despite claims of a looming data usage crisis created by insufficient wireless spectrum, Verizon Wireless is introducing a new app that will encourage customers to find and watch streaming video on their mobile devices.

Viewdini premiers today on the Android platform, and Verizon hopes customers will use it to hunt down their favorite videos from Netflix, Hulu Plus, mSpot, and Comcast Xfinity, all from the Verizon Wireless app.

“We are just seeing a hunger for people wanting to watch video,” Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said in an interview with AllThingsD. “I think this will capture the audience’s imagination.”

If customers use it to stream bandwidth heavy video on a tiered data plan, Verizon will also have the customer’s attention when the bill arrives.

Viewdini, considered one of Verizon’s “key product launches” for the year, does not amount to much on examination. The service does not host videos, it merely indexes them from other videocentric websites. The app will be exclusive to Verizon Wireless, but is not the company’s first foray in the competitive video streaming marketplace.

The Verizon Video app offers streamed video entertainment, but with a twist. Many titles offered by Verizon Video cannot be accessed while on Wi-Fi and require the company’s 3G or 4G network to watch, which counts against your usage allowance.

Mead

There is no indication yet whether Viewdini will have similar restrictions.

While Mead claims the company has several early warning indicators for customers approaching their monthly usage cap, he admits the company hopes to make additional revenue from customers who choose to exceed their allowance and buy additional data.

“We look at it as great flexibility for customers,” Mead called that choice.

While Verizon joins other wireless carriers in calling urgently for additional wireless spectrum, its marketing department does not recognize any wireless data shortage, and continues to introduce new products that encourage their customers to use an increasing amount of data, from which Verizon admits it will earn an increasing percentage of its revenue.