(Courtesy: The Consumerist)

Comcast Cable subscribers in Colorado Springs got more than a bowl of Froot Loops Thursday morning when local ABC affiliate KRDO was suddenly replaced with hardcore adult pornography during an airing of Good Morning America.

Viewers were outraged by the risque replacement, which most assumed was the fault of the TV station.

“I’ve been on the phone already this morning after the porn that was broadcast while my daughter was eating breakfast,” wrote one angry viewer or KRDO’s Facebook page. “I’m outraged! Sick!”

The problems started just after 4 in the morning when Comcast technicians set off a series of cascading failures that ended up disrupting several broadcast TV signals on the cable dial throughout southern Colorado.  But amidst snowy pictures, technical difficulty slides, and test patterns, the appearance of XXX-rated programming for several minutes during ABC-TV’s popular morning news show caused some chaos at KRDO studios when the phones started ringing.

Station officials could do nothing but watch the parade of adult entertainment on their studio monitors.  Since the problem was at the cable company, only Comcast subscribers coped with the mishap.

“We are aware that Comcast is not airing our programming right now,” KRDO posted on its Facebook page early Thursday morning. “It’s an issue with Comcast. We are working on getting it fixed.”

Later Thursday, visibly upset station management appeared on the evening local news to apologize for the error.  Comcast later admitted responsibility for the technical snafu:

We sincerely apologize for the programming interruption on KRDO News Channel 13 (ABC) in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. In the process of correcting a technical system issue, a series of channels were inadvertently shown live on KRDO during the morning programming. The issue was a result of human error which has been resolved and preventative measures have been taken to avoid this from happening in the future.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KRDO Colorado Springs Comcast Channel Switcheroo 4-12-12.mp4[/flv]

KRDO in Colorado Springs found its regular airing of Good Morning America replaced with hardcore pornography on Comcast Cable.  (2 minutes)

The home of Atlantic Canada’s largest hot air balloon festival is getting more than hot air from broadband providers promising better broadband in New Brunswick.  Bell Aliant announced this month it will spend $2 million to expand its FibreOp fiber to the home service to 3,000 homes and businesses in the town of Sussex.

“Access to the FibreOP network represents a tremendous growth opportunity for Sussex, and has huge potential to connect businesses and families,” said Andre LeBlanc, vice president of Residential Products for Bell Aliant. “We are excited to continue our expansion in New Brunswick, and to offer the best TV and Internet to our customers in the Sussex area.”

Bell Aliant’s FibreOp delivers broadband speeds up to 250/30Mbps and is marketed without data caps — a rarity from large providers in Canada.

The company was the first in Canada to cover an entire city with fiber-to-the-home and by the end of 2012, will have invested approximately half a billion dollars to extend it to approximately 650,000 homes and businesses in its territory. FibreOP builds are complete in Greater Saint John including Quispamsis, Rothesay, Grand Bay/Westfield, as well as Bathurst, Fredericton, Miramichi, and Moncton, including Riverview, Dieppe and Shediac. Customers in parts of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador also enjoy fiber to the home service.

While Bell Canada owns a controlling stake in Bell Aliant, it allows the Atlantic Canada phone company to operate under its own branding and supports their aggressive fiber upgrade project across the relatively rural eastern provinces.  Even more remarkably, while Bell is one of Canada’s strongest proponents for usage-based billing and caps on broadband usage by its customers, Bell Aliant competes with cable operators by advertising the fact it delivers unlimited, flat rate service.  Bell Aliant is aggressively expanding fiber to the home service in Atlantic Canada while Bell relies on its less-advanced fiber to the neighborhood service Fibe TV in more populated and prosperous cities in Ontario and Quebec.

That is counter-intuitive to other providers who eschew fiber upgrades in rural communities, suggesting the cost to wire smaller towns is too high for the proportionately lower number of potential customers.  That does not seem to bother Bell Aliant, who considers fiber to the home its best weapon to confront landline cord-cutters.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/What is FibreOP.flv[/flv]

Bell Aliant introduces Atlantic Canada to its FibreOp fiber to the home service, delivering unlimited fiber-fast broadband.  No Internet Overcharging schemes here.  (2 minutes)

Comcast’s national low-income Internet service, Internet Essentials, is getting an upgrade.

Out of more than 14 million Comcast broadband customers, fewer than 50,000 families managed to qualify and successfully obtain the $9.95/mo low-speed Internet service. On Tuesday, Comcast announced it was relaxing some of the program’s requirements to include more families and has also doubled the service’s speeds to 3Mbps for downloads and 768kbps for uploads.

Susan Jin Davis, vice president of Comcast’s Strategic Services explained the changes on the company’s blog:

[…] When we first started out, Internet Essentials was offered to families with children eligible to receive “free” school lunches under the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Today, we have officially extended the program to include families with children eligible to receive “reduced” price lunches too. This change adds about 300,000 households in our service area who can now apply for the program — bringing our estimated total to about 2.3 million eligible families.

[…] Second, we doubled the speed of the broadband connection provided with Internet Essentials. It now comes with up to 3 Mbps downstream and up to 768 Kbps upstream, which makes the online experience even better than it was before. The increase is available now and we notified customers by email that the only thing they need to do is reboot their modems in order to immediately get the new speeds.

Third, as we announced in January, we have streamlined the application process by providing an instant approval process for all students attending schools with the highest percentage of NSLP participation, including Provision 2 schools.

Comcast’s Internet Essentials program was launched as part of an agreement with the Federal Communications Commission to win approval of the cable operator’s merger with NBC-Universal.  Comcast also committed to an expansion of its broadband service in rural areas.  The company says it expanded its service area by 199,876 additional homes in 33 rural communities.

Bright House Networks charges a $20 “collection processing fee” when the cable operator calls customers to remind them they have a past due balance. The fee, charged in addition to the company’s traditional “late charge,” has some Bright House customers upset.

The cable company explains the $20 “collection fee” is levied when a customer is two months past due and represents the costs of contacting the customer and “paperwork” inside Bright House’s offices.  But some customers consider it gouging, especially because they already pay a late fee.

Bright House Networks’ Residential Services Agreement implies a “collection fee” may only be charged when the company dispatches a representative to your home to request/collect payment for a past due amount (underlining ours):

If my Services account is past due and BHN sends a collector to my premises, a field collection fee may be charged. The current field collection fee is on the price list or can be provided on request. I will also be responsible for all other expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs) incurred by BHN in collecting any amounts due under this Agreement and not paid by me.

Bright House charges a $20 "Collection Processing Fee" when it calls past due customers.

It also appears the “collection fee” has been a part of the Bright House experience since at least 2009.  We found one customer from Ocoee, Fla. complaining Bright House was charging a $20 “collection fee” for cable service billed at less than $21 a month.

If you have been charged both past-due and collection fees by Bright House, ask them to waive the fees.  We found several customers who successfully requested the company forgive one or both charges when an account is brought up to date.

Customers having trouble paying Bright House should consider dropping services to lower the bill or negotiate for a retention deal.  Customers threatening to switch to the competition are often able to secure a substantially lower price for service.

Bright House’s reasons for charging the $20 fee seem dubious to us, unless the company actually dispatches an employee to a customer’s home to seek payment.  But then we’d find it difficult to recommend any company that would send an employee to visit a customer’s home demanding money.  Cutting off service to deadbeat customers is often effective enough to prompt a payment arrangement.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WOFL Orlando BrightHouse Late Fees 4-12-12.mp4[/flv]

WOFL in Orlando covers the case of one late-paying Seminole County man who is annoyed Bright House charges him $20 to let him know he is past due.  (2 minutes)

[Updated 3:59pm ET 4/19 — A Bright House representative reached out to emphasize the cable company charges a $20 collection fee only after not receiving payment for two months.  A collections agent is physically sent to the address to give notice of possible termination and at that time a collections fee is billed.  The company denies it bills this fee when calling customers to inquire about a payment.  This seems in keeping with the company’s residential customer agreement, quoted above.  We appreciate the additional information and are happy to pass it on to our readers.]

A fiber optic network may be only as good as the marketing that sells it.

If that is true, Fort Wayne residents have made their choice, and they prefer Comcast Cable over Frontier Communications FiOS.

City officials released figures this week showing Comcast has a clear lead in the Indiana city.  Both companies pay the city franchise fees to do business in Fort Wayne, and Comcast paid almost $435,000, almost double Frontier Communications’ $262,556.

Ft. Wayne, Indiana

Frontier assumed control of the fiber optics network when it purchased the local assets of Verizon Communications.  But Frontier quickly found that volume pricing for video programming gave the old owner a decided advantage.  Frontier found programming prices for its comparatively smaller footprint far higher than what Verizon paid, and quickly began encouraging its fiber video customers switch to DirecTV satellite service.  Comcast responded with a billboard campaign that suggested Frontier was getting out of the fiber business, and encouraged customers to come back to cable.

Some did, but Frontier says it remains committed to its inherited fiber network, even though it lost over 10,000 customers last year.

“We’ve completed our evaluation of our business model and pricing,” Frontier’s Matt Kelley told the Journal-Gazette. “We’re offering an attractive bundle price. Customers are recognizing the quality and value, and that it’s a very compelling service.”

Frontier does appear to be serious about maintaining the broadband and phone service attached to its FiOS product, but has been looking for ways to bring down the wholesale cost of cable television programming and so far has shown no interest in expanding it.

“Our focus is not on FiOS video deployment,” Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter told investors in 2010. “The costs to install, set up and market new FiOS video customers are very expensive and, in our view, uneconomical.”

That’s less of a problem for Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator.  It enjoys volume discounts few other providers can negotiate.  Comcast always had a built-in advantage associated with its incumbency.  Getting customers to switch providers isn’t easy.  But despite the presence of an advanced fiber optic network operated by the competition, Comcast has held on to customers.

“Our customers that are staying with us and joining us are enjoying our services, especially since the introduction of our Xfinity home security management system,” said Comcast’s Mary Beth Halprin, not missing an opportunity to pitch the cable company’s latest new product line. “The home security service costs $39.95 a month and provides around-the-clock monitoring and allows customers to watch live-streaming video from wireless cameras using an iPhone or iPad.”