Canadians overwhelmingly rate their mobile phone providers poor for value, telling Consumer Reports they are paying too much and getting far too little coverage and service in return.

The 2011 Consumer Reports Wireless Survey (subscription required) shows Canada’s largest cell companies are generally awful in the estimation of 15,000 Canadians polled for the survey.  At the very bottom of the barrel are mega-carriers Bell Mobility and Rogers, both rated lousy for service and customer support.

“You can always do better than Rogers and Bell, no matter what other carrier you can think of,” says Thierry Duluis, a Stop the Cap! reader in Quebec. “Biggest does not mean best.”

Consumer Reports agrees.  It top-rated Koodo, a no-contract carrier owned and operated by western Canada’s phone company Telus.  Koodo is a relatively new player, only launching service in 2008, but has since built a reputation for lower prices and reasonably good service to the majority of populated regions across Canada.  But Koodo’s data plans can be expensive and confusing.  A $5 data starter plan delivers 25MB of data, and automatically increments: 26MB-100MB = $10, 101MB-300MB = $15, 301MB-1GB = $20, 1.01GB–3GB = $30, + 2¢/MB above 3GB.  A alternative plan with a 2GB data allowance runs $25 a month with a 2¢/MB overlimit fee.

Consumer Reports

Ironically, several wireless brands owned by large Canadian phone and cable companies scored higher than their respective owners.  Koodo scored higher than Telus Mobility.  So did Fido, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rogers.

Regional SaskTel, which operates in Saskatchewan, received an admirable rating from the consumer magazine, primarily because of its slightly better customer service.  But no carrier, prepaid or postpaid, did extremely well across all categories.  Canadians are frustrated by cell phone prices that are often higher than what their American neighbors pay, and are often accompanied with stingy usage allowances.

Mediacom is announcing broad price increases for many of its customers scheduled to take effect on Dec. 15.  Most cable-TV subscribers will pay $2-3 more a month for basic cable, an additional $2 a month for Cinemax and Showtime, and $2 extra a month for “Digital Plus” cable service.  To add insult, the paperless bill credit that used to knock $1 off your bill if you chose not to receive a mailed billing statement is also being eliminated.

Lee Grassley, Mediacom’s chief lobbyist, delivered the company line about the rate increase in letters mailed to subscribers.  In essence, he blamed everyone but Mediacom for the rate hikes, and in poetic language one normally doesn’t get from a cable company rate increase notification:

As our nation struggles to pull itself out of what has been called the Great Recession, we recognize that these are challenging times for the hardworking men and women living in the communities that we serve.

[…] Over the past few years, many broadcasters have used their monopoly powers to demand 100%, 200% and even 300% rate increases during contract negotiations.  This has driven up cable and satellite rates and forced American consumers to pay billions of dollars for “free” over-the-air television.

The problems with sports programming are equally alarming.  One look at the skyrocketing rights fees announced with recent deals and it is easy to see that the marketplace for live televised sports is out of control.

[…] Contrary to public perception, cable companies are reluctant to raise video prices because when we do, we lose subscribers.  Mediacom does not make money when we raise video rates, since we remit virtually every penny of the increase on to programmers.  In fact, over the last three years, our programming cost increases were more than double our video revenue increases.

Since the programming community has been unwilling to exercise even the slightest measure of self-restraint when it comes to reigning in their spending or increasing their price demands, Mediacom has taken the fight to Washington.

Mediacom as new-found-friend fighting for lower cable rates comes across as ironic, at best, to Stop the Cap! reader Noel, who lives in Mediacom’s Iowa footprint.

“This is the same cable company who pocketed rate increases annually for as long as I’ve been a subscriber, and if they can’t raise the price of the television service, they’ll just make it up on the broadband side,” Noel writes.  “They have their nerve complaining about monopolies.”

Noel points out the local station retransmission consent fees are a more recent phenomenon, and Mediacom rate increases in prior years were the same or higher.

“I think they are realizing there is an absolute maximum people in Iowa can afford for cable, and years of rate increases have allowed all of the players to assume they can slice a bigger piece from that pie for themselves, and we’re tapped out,” Noel adds.

Noel called Mediacom and threatened to cancel service and received a nice consolation price: customer retention pricing normally reserved for new customers.

“I have a year reprieve, but rest assured I will start dropping things after the deal expires at these prices.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCCI Des Moines Mediacom Rate Increases 11-28-11.flv[/flv]

KCCI in Des Moines covers Mediacom’s rate increases and the reaction from local residents who will have to pay more for cable service.  (2 minutes)

Esteves

Time Warner Cable wants to introduce usage-based broadband pricing for its residential customers, according to the company’s chief financial officer.

Irene Esteves told investors attending a UBS media investor conference the cable company sees broadband usage as a “complement to our TV offering,” but reassured Wall Street Time Warner has a “wonderful hedge” against the cord-cutting customer: usage-based pricing.

Esteves believes usage-based pricing for Time Warner Cable broadband will become a reality sooner or later.  Charging “heavy users” more would already be familiar to consumers used to paying higher prices for heavy use of other services, and she claimed light users would have the option of paying less.

But despite favorable reception to the idea of usage pricing by Wall Street, Esteves acknowledged the company’s past experiments in usage pricing didn’t go as planned, and she suggested the company will introduce usage pricing “the right way rather than quickly.”

Esteves’ view of broadband pricing echoes that of Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, who in 2009 approved an experimental pricing scheme that raised the price for flat-rate broadband to a whopping $150 a month.  The plan was shelved by Britt less than two weeks after it was announced because of consumer backlash and political pressure.

Time Warner Cable was the loudest proponent of usage pricing at the investor event.  Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis told the same conference while the company wasn’t opposed to the concept of charging customers for usage, he saw no immediate need to “nickel and dime customers” for broadband service.

Critics of usage pricing point to the enormous profits cable companies earn from existing flat-rate broadband service.  One Wall Street analyst says cable operators already collect a 95% profit margin on unlimited service, and Comcast pays costs of around $8 a month for broadband it sells for $40-50.

Esteves’ comments come the closest yet to admitting what Internet Overcharging critics have claimed all along — usage-limiting pricing schemes are about protecting revenue from cable television packages, and boosting profits that have waned on the television side of the business.  In the 2009 experiment, light users would have faced usage limits as little as 1GB per month, with a steep overlimit penalty, so critics doubt light users would realize any significant savings, and “heavy users” would face overlimit penalties that represent almost pure profit for the cable operator.

A Little Rock hairdresser’s electronic shrine to the rock group KISS has led to a standoff with Verizon Wireless, who claims the device is jamming their wireless signal.

Stacie “Mack” McIntosh received the pinball machine-sized “shrine,” complete with miniatures of group members and a working light show, as a gift from fellow KISS devotees.  When she plugs it in and turns it on, Verizon Wireless’ signal degrades in the immediate area — a victim of some unknown interference the wireless company attributes to the device.  Now the cell phone company is demanding McIntosh get rid of the shrine, or at least leave it unplugged, and McIntosh has refused.

“What can they do to me? This is my salon,” she told local TV station KLRT. “I pay the bills.”

For now, the KISS show must go on, and visitors who shop in and around McIntosh’s salon have to endure one signal bar (or less) of reception.

But the problem may soon turn up elsewhere in Arkansas and beyond.  The company that manufactured the original KISS shrine, Weird Art Productions, is busily creating more shrines that could lead to more interference problems.

Verizon says interference to their cell phone network isn’t limited to music group shrines.  Malfunctioning transmitters, electronic light signs, wireless devices at drive-thru restaurants, and souped up CB radios can all cause problems on certain frequency bands, some licensed specifically to Verizon Wireless.

For now, it’s unlikely the Federal Communications Commission will actively get involved in McIntosh’s dispute, considering the interference is highly-localized around McIntosh’s salon.  But Verizon may be within its rights to insist interference problems be mitigated, especially if the KISS shrine concept goes viral.  That may eventually ensnare the manufacturer — Weird Art Productions — in what the FCC calls a “Notice of Apparent Liability,” legal jargon for its version of an indictment, sometimes followed by a substantial fine.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KLRT Little Rock Kiss vs Verizon Wireless 11-22-11.flv[/flv]

KLRT in Little Rock visits the scene of the wireless ‘crime’ — Stacie McIntosh’s KISS shrine, ensconced in her salon and ready for the next performance… for now.  (4 minutes)

Comcast’s decision to spend $300,000 attempting to defeat one community’s public broadband initiative illustrates how America’s largest cable company invested a portion of your monthly cable bill.  It turned out to be a bad investment — Longmont voters saw right through the dollar-a-holler vote buying operation run by a Denver-based “public strategies” firm.  Every vote in favor of the cable company cost Big Cable $35.17 — a bit less than many pay for a month of broadband service.

The pro-fiber forces spent a collective $5,000, some of which came from individuals who want more competition in Colorado.  The Institute for Local Self-Reliance notes the cable industry couldn’t even find a local spokesperson to cheerlead their campaign.

It is proof positive citizen activism can still beat back corporate-financed propaganda campaigns and make all the difference.