Watch these shows online, if you want to risk some uninvited guests.

There is nothing new about news outlets promoting tips and tricks to lower your monthly cable bill.  We publish similar stories ourselves here on Stop the Cap!  But some newspapers take things further, openly advocating you disconnect your cable service for good and watch everything online.  This week, we found one even willing to publish website addresses that skirt copyright laws and take online video underground.

The State Press encourages Arizona State students to thumb their noses at Cox Communications’ latest offer — cable television for $29.99 a month, good for six months (regular price $70).  Instead, they encourage, take your viewing online to Netflix and Hulu — the former for movies, the latter for television series.  But with cable companies and Hollywood studios conspiring to tackle the growing problem of cord-cutting, new restrictions are finding their way to fans of both websites, including waiting periods, limited series runs, and higher subscription fees.  This means war to the State Press:

There is a dark side to these two corporate entities, however. In their attempt to slowly weasel their way into your pockets a bit more, Hulu has gone Plus and Netflix has divided their packages, limiting your viewing. Hulu has seemingly said, “You can pay a little more to watch it the day after, right? No? Well, then I guess you’re waiting five more days for that recent episode,” while Netflix has exclaimed, “Unlimited to our choosing! You’re going to have to pay up if you want every movie out there.” So we must retaliate and go a little dark ourselves.

The author advises readers there is a way around the roadblocks — visiting a website already shut down once by copyright enforcement action (but has since resurfaced with a Chinese web address), providing a list of links to other websites that host copyright-infringing videos you can’t watch on Hulu or Netflix.

While the author of the State Press story may not realize it, a brief test visit to the “pirate-streamed site” opened the door to some nefarious extras.  With the help of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, we stopped unwanted browser toolbars, various intrusion attempts, and even a few pieces of actual malware that wanted in on the party.  Without the most robust security software, visits to websites with underground video content can wreak havoc, and there are not that many TV shows worth watching to make that headache worthwhile.

The website owner disclaims responsibility from just about everything:

“[This website] does not host, provide, archive, store, or distribute media of any kind, and acts merely as an index (or directory) of media posted by other webmasters on the internet, which is completely outside of our control. Whereas we do not filter such references, we cannot and do not attempt to control, censor, or block any indexed material that may be considered offensive, abusive, libellous, obnoxious, inaccurate, deceptive, unlawful or otherwise distressing neither do we accept responsibility for this content or the consequences of such content being made available.”

We encourage you to exercise caution visiting websites that are willing to skirt copyright laws.  Up-to-date antivirus and spyware detection software when visiting is a must at all times.  Many of these sites stay in business selling ad space to anyone, and those ads can come with unwanted malware that can find its way onto your computer long after the viewing is over.  Be careful.

Wireless operator (and cable company) Rogers Communications likes to spend big dollars pushing the message Canada is in the midst of a wireless spectrum crunch — a big reason why it wants “equal treatment”-bidding in upcoming spectrum auctions that may include “set-asides” exclusively for emerging Canadian wireless competitors.

But apparently the spectrum shortage only impacts areas outside of the province of Quebec, because Rogers plans to experiment with a new LTE wireless video on demand service it plans to pitch Quebecers, perhaps as early as next year.

Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed told the Montreal Gazette the cable company intends to enter the Quebec market with an “over-the-top” on-demand video service, distributed over Rogers’ growing LTE wireless broadband network.  While Mohamed was quick to say this doesn’t mean Rogers intends to launch a full-scale competitive invasion against provincial providers Videotron, Ltd., and Bell Canada Enterprises, it is pre-emptively getting into the business of serving cord-cutters who drop traditional cable packages to watch online video.

The new service is expected to be accessible on phones, tablets, and Internet-enabled televisions and video game consoles, presumably through a wireless Internet adapter.

Mohamed

“Video for wireless has huge potential for growth,” Mohamed told the Gazette. “It’s sort of the mirror image of (how cable evolved), which went from video, to data to voice.”

Nothing eats bandwidth like online video, and Rogers traditionally caps this and other usage on their mobile wireless network, citing spectrum and capacity shortages. But Rogers sees few impediments serving up certain kinds of online video: namely their own.

That’s not a message the company continues to deliver consumers on its “I Want My LTE” website, part of a robust lobbying effort to get its hands on as much new spectrum as possible, even if it means locking out would-be competitors.  In fact, leaving the impression the company has spectrum to spare is so politically dangerous, Mohamed took the wind out of his own announcement by mentioning, as an aside, their networks still don’t have enough capacity to deliver full-motion video to a large number of customers at the same time.

“I think wireless networks in the foreseeable future will not have the capability to deliver full-motion video to a large number of customers at the same time, even with LTE,” he said. “So what you will see is an integration of wired and wireless, where the wireless network will off-load the traffic to a wired network.”

Rogers’ decision to limit the service, both in scope and range, is also designed to protect itself (and other cable operators) from unnecessary competition.  Rogers won’t offer a full menu of video services outside of its traditional cable system areas in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland, and only Quebec residents (where Rogers doesn’t sell cable TV) will have the option of signing up for the wireless video-on-demand service.

Time Warner Cable has introduced TWC TV, its first app for Android tablet owners.

The cable operator envisions the free app will eventually be as robust as its more feature-rich version for Apple’s iPad, which has been available for months.  But for now, the Android version leaves out one important feature — streaming live television.

Time Warner is calling its TWC TV app “the ultimate remote control.”

The app is only certified to run on a handful of Android tablets (smartphones are excluded entirely), including the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab.  Other Android tablets may or may not work, depending on the version of Android installed and the resolution of the screen.  For now, Time Warner anticipates the app will work on Android 3.x (Honeycomb on up) tablets with a resolution of 1280×800.

Features include:

• Change the channel on your TV from anywhere in your home;
• Interactive program guide – view program listings for up to 7 days and change channels on compatible set-top boxes;
• View a filtered guide showing favorite channels or HD channels only;
• Search for programming by title or episode;
• Schedule and manage upcoming DVR recordings on compatible DVRs.

Customers must subscribe to a Time Warner Cable video package at the Standard (Expanded Basic) level or higher and have registered for an account and password at the Time Warner Cable website.

Alltel Service Areas Sold by Verizon Wireless to AT&T

When Verizon Wireless won approval of its takeover deal with formerly-independent wireless carrier Alltel, the federal government required Verizon to divest itself of Alltel’s assets in areas where the combined company would have a mega-share of the local wireless market.  The majority of affected customers, particularly in Montana and the Dakotas, were eventually acquired by AT&T, which uses a completely different network standard.  Customers were handed new phones that work on AT&T’s GSM network, but have since discovered those phones have little use in wide areas where AT&T simply doesn’t deliver a signal.

Even worse, Verizon’s robust network across the region is off-limits for roaming purposes, forcing customers that were perfectly satisfied with Alltel ready to throw their AT&T phones off Mount Rushmore.

“We got stuck with AT&T, which doesn’t care about the rural areas,” Mark Freeman of Harlowtown, Montana told a visiting reporter with the Wall Street Journal.

In the Black Hills, where AT&T’s network is as spartan as the landscape, some customers waited months before they could actually make and receive phone calls in places where Alltel’s old network (and their roaming agreement with Verizon Wireless) suited local residents just fine.

“We’ve been getting dropped calls, missed calls, and [have trouble] servicing [ATM] machines,” said Bill Huffman, an armored car worker in Sioux Falls frustrated by AT&T.  Area ATM machines depend on AT&T’s wireless network to alert drivers when local cash machines run low.  But AT&T’s network isn’t dependable, according to Huffman.

Ironically, customers are flocking to the carrier that would have been their new provider to begin with if not for the federal government divestiture order: Verizon Wireless.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSJ In South Dakota Dropped Calls and Dead Spots 11-27-11.flv[/flv]

Verizon Wireless stores in the region have suffered periodic equipment shortages ever since AT&T switched on their own, less satisfactory network.  That’s because AT&T customers are dropping their contracts at a rate rivaling the number of calls AT&T itself drops across the region.  The Wall Street Journal visits with perturbed local residents in Montana and South Dakota.  (4 minutes)

The Federal Communications Commission has concluded allowing AT&T and T-Mobile to merge will cause huge job losses and knock out a vital wireless competitor in an increasingly concentrated U.S. wireless marketplace.

The new 266-page document, produced by FCC staffers, directly challenges AT&T’s contention that the merger will bring about job creation and an improved mobile broadband network for millions of rural Americans.

The report comes on the heels of news the Commission will allow the FCC to withdraw its pending application before the FCC to win approval of the merger.  That allows the company to resubmit the merger request at a later date.

The FCC determined prices will increase an average of 6-7% in these cities if the merger deal gets approved.

The new report, occasionally redacted to remove competitive information, found AT&T vastly exaggerating the benefits of the deal, questioning whether it would indeed lead to lower prices for consumers, bring about enhanced service, and create new jobs.

Overall, the agency concludes, AT&T and T-Mobile have failed to meet their burden of proof that the merger is in the public interest.  The FCC staffers found no compelling reason why AT&T needed T-Mobile to build out its 4G network to the majority of the country.  Indeed, memos accidentally leaked to the Commission by AT&T’s legal team suggested AT&T executives rejected expansion plans as too costly.  Instead, they proposed a $39 billion dollar merger with T-Mobile with a $6 billion deal cancellation clause.  That penalty exceeds the $3.8 billion AT&T rejected spending to pursue 4G upgrades on its own.

Among the Commission report’s findings:

• The merger would increasingly concentrate the U.S. wireless marketplace, leading to unilateral and coordinated efforts to raise prices by remaining carriers;
• Roaming agreements for remaining smaller and regional carriers could become more difficult and expensive to reach with fewer players in the marketplace;
• Pricing innovation, a hallmark of T-Mobile, would be lost.  T-Mobile is cited by the FCC as one of America’s most-disruptive carriers, forcing other companies to match their aggressive offers;
• Despite AT&T’s promises to grandfather existing T-Mobile customers to their existing plans, customers would be unable to upgrade to an equally innovative plan T-Mobile probably would have offered on its own.  Instead, customers would be forced to choose one of AT&T’s more expensive, traditional plans;
• AT&T is overstating the importance of remaining competitors, especially regional carriers and Leap Wireless’ Cricket and MetroPCS, which all have a negligible market share and depend heavily on roaming agreements with companies like Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T to survive;
• Substantial evidence exists to believe without T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon Wireless would likely raise prices and mimic each others’ respective service plans, pricing, usage allowances, and network policies;
• Sprint will probably be forced to raise prices as a consequence of the merger to pay for increasingly expensive backhaul and roaming services, often purchased from AT&T or Verizon.  Sprint would also be pressured by market forces into pricing its services closer to AT&T and Verizon, if only to pay for handset and subscriber acquisition costs.  Sprint’s new customers often come from T-Mobile or smaller providers — less often from AT&T and Verizon.
• AT&T did not submit sufficient evidence to demonstrate the combination of T-Mobile and AT&T’s cell sites would substantially relieve congestion issues, especially in America’s largest cities where AT&T’s network issues are the worst;
• AT&T’s own documents suggest the company will fire most of T-Mobile’s customer service staff post-merger, leading ironically to the loss of a customer service support unit that has a higher customer satisfaction rating than AT&T itself.  Not only would T-Mobile customers be forced to deal with AT&T’s customer service, AT&T customers will have to compete with millions of T-Mobile customers for the time and attention of AT&T’s existing customer service representatives — a recipe for a congestion of a different kind;
• Much of the cost savings realized from the merger, earned from laying off T-Mobile workers, closing T-Mobile retail stores, terminating reseller agreements, and unifying billing, administration, and network technologies, will be realized by AT&T (and its shareholders), not average customers.  The end effect for consumers will be higher prices and a deteriorating level of customer service.

Smaller, scrappier carriers with aggressive pricing have historically forced larger companies like AT&T and Verizon to compete by lowering prices and offering more generous calling and data plans.

The report angered AT&T’s chief lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, who called its release “troubling” because, in his words, it represents a “staff draft” not voted on by the Commission as a whole.

“It has no force or effect under the law, which raises questions as to why the FCC would choose to release it,” Cicconi said in a statement. “The draft report has also not been made available to AT&T prior to today, so we have had no opportunity to address or rebut its claims, which makes its release all the more improper.”

But the report’s substantial research suggests FCC staffers have taken a very close look at the arguments and the evidence submitted by AT&T, T-Mobile and opponents of the deal.  The findings only favor AT&T and T-Mobile with a mild agreement that combining resources in certain markets where both compete might reduce network redundancy.  But the cost to consumers is way too high, the report concludes.

Sprint couldn’t be happier with the report’s findings, saying in a statement:

“The investigation’s findings are clear. Approval of AT&T’s bid for T-Mobile would lead to higher prices for consumers, eliminate jobs, harm competition, and dampen innovation across the wireless industry.”

An unredacted copy of the findings will be available to the U.S. Department of Justice for its consideration as it presses its own legal case against AT&T to derail the merger on anti-competitive grounds.

Should T-Mobile remain independent, the FCC says wireless prices will decline.